Israel, Part 1

We finally decided to go to Israel. This trip has been on the back of our minds for a long time. Kids are old enough to be on their own for couple of weeks. Time to go!

Some decisions needed to be made:

Question: when?
Answer: not during the summer or winter. Summer is way too hot for sightseeing. Winter is too cold to go swimming outside. So, either fall or spring. We've decide in fall.

Question: for how long?
Answer:  depends on the answers to the following questions, but we've decided that it should not be more then around 2 weeks.

Question: do it as part of the tour or wing it when there?
Answer: I've decided to do some research. I found out that Israeli Ministry of tourism has certification program for tour guides. There are thousands of certified guides out there. I took the easy route: get a tour. Tours include itinerary that are very similar among tour operators. They all visit similar places and include hotels accomodations. We had 2 requirements: 1) we wanted the tour to finish in Tel Aviv 2) we wanted to hike up the Masada and see the sunrise.

Majority of the tours end in Jerusalem, but there were some that ended in Tel Aviv, so that was not a problem.

The second request was a little more challenging: The problem is that all tours to Masada/Dead Sea start in Jerusalem, which means they arrive at Masada late morning, and they all take gondola to the top, no hiking. We found one tour: 11 days tour from Gate1travel.com that has a stay over night at one of the hotels at Dead sea. The thought is that we will wake up early enough in the morning, hike up to Masada to meet sunrise and be back to hotel before the breakfast. I am sure we will need to figure out few details, but this is as close to the goal as I can get.

Also this tour starts in Jerusalem and ends in Tel Aviv. So, we can stay in the same hotel after the tour is over!

The final decision: 11 days tour of Israel from gate1trave.com