First Day in Israel 2010

December 9, 2010—Thursday
We arrived at about 2:40 pm Israel time. A rabbi sat beside me on the way over. He had been visiting his parents in New York and was going home to Tel Aviv. We conversed a little, and I introduced us. He never told me his name.
I noticed that some of the orthodox Jews are winding their long sideburns around their ears, rather than letting them hang. But true to form, the rabbis on the flight got up and put on their prayer shawls to say their morning prayers. I did not see where they prayed; the plane was a 777 and was a double-decker with two flight crews.
We had no problems getting through passport control and getting to the rental car agency. But there, I found out Logan was too young to drive, so I had to do it. The cost for an economy car for eight days was $45. The cost for insurance with a $500 deductible was $200, and you are required by law to have insurance.
The drive to Jerusalem was not bad, a little have traffic on Highway 1 in places, but not bad. The car rental person told us that if we took Hwy. 6 which is a toll road, the car would be electronically billed for the toll, and the rental company would charge us another $15 for having to pay it.
Driving in Jerusalem was a mass of confusion. The roads meander worse than they do in the South, and it is very difficult to read the Hebrew road names. We got lost and right during rush hour traffic. While the drivers on the highway were not aggressive, in Jerusalem they are very aggressive. Cars nose out from side streets, people edge in from other lanes, you have to yield to pedestrians in the middle of the street, and some intersections have a confluence of roads. At one intersection, there was a bus lane on the left that went straight. We were in the lane to its right that only turned right. As we sat at the light, we wondered how that was going to happen at the same time. Then we saw the bus lane had its own traffic light. We turned in front of the buses while they waited at their red light.
Logan says it reminds him of the traffic in Brazil, except there are hardly any motorcycles dodging in and out of traffic. In Brazil, they were everywhere.
We really got lost in the city so we finally started asking people for directions. Some couldn’t speak English. Finally, a young lady in a car beside that was stopped in traffic gave us directions. We made it to the underground parking deck and then looked like big-time tourists as we rolled our luggage out into the shopping mall that separated the deck from the Old City of Jerusalem.
The New Imperial Hotel is undergoing some remodeling right now so it is not looking its best. The floors are tile, and the ceilings are high. It is a basic room, but I wanted the experience of staying in the Old City. I can hear soft music out our window and some street sounds. We have a small refrigerator and a TV that we haven’t figured out how to work.
We passed a bread seller on our way in the Jaffa Gate so we went back out and bought an elliptical loaf of sesame bread. It was really good. Then we went walking in the Old City to find the LDS souvenir shop called “Ali Baba’s.”
I bought six sets of leather scripture covers that were tooled with “Jerusalem” and the city scape for about $20 each. I also bought flat Christmas ornaments cut from olive wood with Nativity scenes for about $1.50 each. We both bought quite a bit of other stuff.
We are back at the hotel now, planning to get up around 6 am to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher tomorrow.