The Monastery at Latrun and Ben Gurion House

I really don't why it has taken me over 12 years to take a look at the Latrun Monastery. After all, it is situated about a ten minute drive from my home! I've driven all over the country to visit some amazing places, but sometimes I guess we miss the ones on our doorstep! Anyway, a recent cancelled afternoon plan meant the youngest son and I had some time to spare so I decided the time had come to visit this special place.

The Monastery at Latrun was established in 1890 and served as a way station for pilgrims from Jaffa to Jerusalem in the 19th century. During the First World War the Turks expelled the monks and destroyed the monastery. The Monks returned in 1927 when they built the present building. The clock tower of the church was completed only in 1954.
The Latrun Monastery, where until 1960 the monks took a vow to refrain from idle talk and to uphold silence at all times except during prayer,  became famous for the good wine and olive oil it produces and which are available from a small shop run by the monks. The monastery garden is also beautiful and so is the outside area surrounded by olive trees. In fact the son and I took books with us and, after we had been inside the church and looked around the gardens, we sat for a while under the trees, thoroughly involved in our reading material until the 5 o'clock bells began to peal and announced to us that it was perhaps time to go home.

A couple of days after our visit to the monastery we took ourselves off to another building we have passed many, many times and yet had never been in. Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, left his home on Ben-Gurion Boulevard in Tel Aviv to the State of Israel when he passed away in 1973. He requested that the house become a public institution for reading, study and research. Situated very near to the beach, we have often been too sandy to go inside, but this time we planned a special visit.

The house was built in 1930-31 and was Paula and David Ben-Gurion's permanent home until they settled in Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert of southern Israel, and then they lived alternately here and there until Ben-Gurion's death.
All the items belonging to the Ben-Gurions are in the house, in the same condition and in the same place they used to be when the house was lived in. It was, in fact, a little bit like stepping back in time. The hubby said that some of the items in the house reminded him of his grandma's possessions. The youngest son was rather taken with Ben-Gurion's four library rooms where he used to work, write letters and his diary, and to receive guests and friends.
Afterwards we watched a film all about Ben-Gurion's life in the neighbouring Hillel Cohen House, and finished the day eating frozen yoghurt on the beach. It can't all be educational you know!