Israel - Day 4 - The Dead Sea & Hanukkah Celebrations

We hopped back in the bus & drove passed Jericho (which we'll be coming back to visit on day 6) on our way to our final stop.

Our last stop of the day was the Dead Sea at Kalia Beach.  We were supposed to visit the dead sea on day 6 of our journey, but the weather wasn't looking great so we decided to swap around a few things so we could have some time to swim.

Did you know that the Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth?  It is 1,200 feet below sea level.  The Dead Sea is also the border between Israel & Jordan, the minute you step inside you are in both countries at once.  Hooray for marking "Jordan" off our "countries visited" list.  The sea has +30% salt content making it absolutely impossible to sink inside it.  (For reference, the Great Salt Lake had anywhere between 5%-10% salt content.  We were VERY excited to experience this ourselves.

Our tour guide gave us a little over an hour to swim, but told us that we really shouldn't spend more than 15-20 minutes in the sea otherwise we would feel some bad side effects afterwards.  Telling kids who love to swim that they only have 20 minutes is pure torture.  We all had every intention of getting out after 20 minutes, but we lost track of time & spent about 40 minutes swimming, & yes, there were some side effects involved. . . 

It was the middle of December, so the water wasn't hot, but it wasn't freezing either.  It did take a little bit of adjustment, but it wasn't bad at all.

Everyone was having a blast.  The trick was to walk out as far as you could, then just lay back on the water.  You immediately start floating.  You can't NOT float.  It just happens.  In fact, you can even stand up in this water, it pushes you upward so you HAVE to float on your back.  It's absolutely bizarre.

We were also told that the mud in the Dead Sea had healing & cleansing properties so we were Instructed to rub it all over our bodies as we were swimming, let it harden, then wash it off at the showers on our way out.

When it was finally time to get out & get ready to head to our new hotel in Jerusalem, we started to feel those "effects" we were warned about.  A lot of the kids had salt in their eyes & were crying.  Trek fell in the water & cut himself so the salt was stinging that, & every papercut, hangnail, or sore on your body felt like daggers in your skin.  And of course my poor Lorien who has the most sensitive skin EVER decided swimming so long was the worst idea ever.  Her entire face & body was covered in welts from the salt.

My boys' hair had solidified into salt statues.  There were salt crystals throughout & each piece of hair was standing straight up all by itself.  It was hard as a rock.

Everybody ended up having to take showers in the bathrooms there at the beach to fully get rid of all the salt.  As we were getting ready to leave, one of the shops offered everyone some lotion samples to put on their hands to counteract the dryness the salt created.  SMART BUSINESS!!!  Pretty much everyone went into that shop to buy the lotion.  Our skin was DYING & it was amazing lotion.

After getting all cleaned up after swimming, we hopped back on our bus & drove into the city of Jerusalem.  It was dark so we couldn't see much, but we were all very tired & excited to get to our hotel.  We stayed at the Jerusalem Gold Hotel for the remainder of our trip.  It was in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem where most of the Orthodox Jewish population lives.  We didn't realize we were coming to Jerusalem during Hanukkah!!  As we drove into the city, we could see the people lighting their menorah candles to celebrate the 2nd day of Hanukkah.  All the menorahs were shining brightly in the windows of all the homes.  It was incredible.

We made it into our hotel & got everyone situated in their rooms.  We had 3 rooms again, but this time our rooms were interconnected with each other which was nice.  We had a door that led into the boy's room so we could better keep an eye on them.  We all went down for a delicious buffet dinner (the pistachio ice cream was INCREDIBLE).  Then everyone decided to go to bed early.  There was music being played outside the hotel really really loudly.  I HAD to know what was going on so Trek & I left the kids to sleep & we went exploring the city. 

It was a Hanukkah party & it was a BLAST.  Everyone was out on the streets singing & dancing.  There was music being played by a DJ right next to the train station just outside our hotel.  We were loving every minute of it.  We stayed for a bit, then walked around the city for a few miles, then headed back to the hotel to get some sleep. . . but being part of the Hanukkah celebration was AMAZING.