Day 9
It's 4:34 am. We drove to Masada to attempt to climb that thing. Looking up at it, you're basically looking at this huge mountain quite a bit bigger than enchanted rock. The only way the hike could be described is a snaking stairway to heaven. Most of it was these huge rocky stairs that were about as natural as plastic surgery, you can tell its man-made, but you don't care because it looks great.
For most, the hike was much easier than the one the day before, but for those of us not practiced with the stairmaster, it was quite difficult. The sunrise from the top of the mountain was more legendary than any of Barney Stinson's charades. I had the chance to be one of the first to see the top of the orange ball of fire peak over the mountains. Many a cheesy picture was taken with the flaming ball as a background, or cookie, or energy ball from a Japanese anime. We then hiked around the top of the mountain, to where there was a large bridge over the edge where our voices would echo for generations to hear. We shouted "ey," like the Fonzi and even he would be proud of the echoes that followed. It was pretty mpressive. You could hear the echoes bouncing off of the mountains like freshly popped popcorn in a microwave.
We finished exploring the top where I only fell asleep once, God bless. We then climbed back down the mountain which was surprisingly difficult, but not as bad as the hike up, I'd like to blame gravity for this. Post hike we ate probably the best breakfast we've had in Israel, and then drove to this tourist trap shop, which actually turned out to be pretty neat. Most of our days are about 16 hours long, at this point our day had already been almost 8 hours and it was only 11 in the morning.
The best thing to fix that was the Dead Sea actually. There's no real way to explain it, this place is nuts. We just had to walk out and sit down in the water to float. It honestly felt like we were levitating. You could sit criss-cross in the water, you could superman, the people on the trip who had trouble swimming could literally paddle through the water with no problems. It's literally impossible to drown. We covered ourselves in the Dead Sea mud and then bathed in the water. Hours later it still feels like that it's extremely refreshing. 1/1 would float again.
After that, we went to the Jerusalem Market, Machane Yehuda. There were people everywhere, and it was extremely congested, to the point where it was near impossible to walk. However, the food was on point, or "on fleek" as we taught our Israeli friends. Awake for 12 hours and it's only like 4 pm. Good god sleep is gonna be better than owning a small private island that has its own Torchy's tacos as the premiere restaurant.
The evening concluded with a Shabbat service and Oneg.
Photo credit: @shoval_9
