November 21st, 2019
We started our day with a big breakfast provided by the hostel. Then we took a train and a bus to Yad Vashem, which is Israel’s Memorial to the Victims of the Holocaust. It was a huge place and we did a guided audio tour through the museum. There is not much I can say about it as the devastating horrors of this time in history are beyond words or comprehension. It was obviously a very intense day and there was so much there, it took us hours to get part-way through the whole way. We had to speed it up at the end if we were going to make it to the Dead Sea. With heavy hearts, we took the train and then a bus to the Dead Sea making it there just as the sun was setting. We went to a really cool campsite that had a great view of the water called Ein Gedi Camp Lodge. Here they had tents you could rent or you could set up your own. Brendan and I were killing ourselves lugging a tent around all of SE Asia without using it, and then reached a place to camp and had left the tent in Tel Aviv. So, for $75 a night we rented a shared tent that had five mats in it. If you wanted a pillow or sheet it was extra. Like I mentioned before, Israel is very expensive…The atmosphere was nice and we made friends with our tent mates.
We went to a little store and got some snacks and a bottle of wine and sat outside talking and playing cards until late that night with our tent mates. The owner of the camp also came by and hung out for a while with us and was super nice giving us drinks and things. I fell asleep on the couch outside of the tent (it was much warmer at the Dead Sea than Jerusalem).