Free is Free

Many museums participate in the ASTC Reciprocal program. This means, if you have membership to a particular museum you automatically get free admission to a "sister" museum as long as it is 90 miles away from the one you originally bought the membership. We are members of the Discovery Cube Museum in Anaheim, CA and its sister museum here in Israel is the Bloomfield Science Center in Jerusalem.

They took one look at my membership card and saw the ASTC emblem and let us right in. Free parking too. How awesome is that? The museum is a very hands on science center and fortunately they have all of their signage in English and Hebrew (Arabic too, but we have yet to be able to decipher those squiggly lines) The first area is an out door area that focuses on optical illusions. My kids love puzzles and riddles and illusions, so this was right up their alley.
We entered the main hall to the science behind scenes in popular Israeli children's books. If my kids knew the stories they may have appreciated this more, but they still tried out everything. Bailey's favorite was loading a wind tunnel with vellum leaves and watching them blow out. Meir and Mendel especially liked the plate spinning exhibit.

Next we checked out the out door water science center. The kids were light on the explanations of what they were doing, but enjoying themselves nonetheless. We had to move inside once Bailey found throwing the pea gravel into the water features more entertaining.
With our free entry, we were also given coupons to redeem a project in the Phineas and Ferb section. We colored and built - with directions exclusively in Hebrew - a P and F race car and glider. There were tracks to send them down. A few other things were in that hall, but we breezed right through.

We checked out their exhibits on electricity and finally the Carnival science. The museum is nice, a decent size with lots to touch and do. It is also air conditioned. Is it a must see, no. But it was free for us and an enjoyable day out.  Too bad the food in the cafe wasn't kosher. We did keep to our ritual of ice cream and Popsicles.

In search of food and souvenirs (I had been holding that off until the end of our trip, and sadly we are just about there) we decided to head to Malcha Mall. I found it, but for future reference the GPS calls it the "Jerusalem Mall". We walked around and noticed the lack tourist trap items so headed to the food court. Pizza and Falafel hit the spot. I thought about going to Ben Yehuda street, the home of tourist traps, but it was rush hour and traffic was just too annoying.
Back to RBS to hang out with the cousins. Mendel even had the ultimate play date and slept over at the Bermans.