We are a married couple 66 and 63 and this is our first guided group tour although we have traveled to Europe multiple times and to China on our own before (using day trip guides as needed), however due to middle east issues we felt safer with a guided tour for this destination. In Dec 2022 we booked a Best of Israel trip with Trafalgar via Affordable Tours for late March/early April 2023. It turned out using Affordable as a travel agent saved us $400 but we had 2 layers to get through when there were issues.

We did use Trafalgar to book our flights – this was probably a mistake because they made 2 mistakes and every time, I contacted them via chat they told me to go through my travel agent. If I hadn’t used a travel agent, I am not sure that would have been better because stories from others on the trip said Trafalgar hold times were insanely long.

Anyway if I had a do-over I would book my own flights because we paid in full mid Jan but didn’t get ticketed till early march for a march 28 departure – first mistake I found was they had us returning in October (hard to get something that wrong), after a reticketing and a change to direct flights out of Newark for an additional $470 we found a 2nd mistake. They neglected to use the suffix (Jr.) that is on my passport which they had copies of, so several rounds of emails and calls to Affordable tours were necessary but the travel agent did a great job handling Trafalgar bottlenecks. The explanation is that after Covid they are down many agents, and many new hires are unseasoned. I guess the takeaway is check everything multiple times when dealing with tour companies.

Travel insurance is mandatory for middle east trips so we booked via Trafalgar’s plan for $640 so the total for this trip was $10,961 including an extra night that cost a high rate of $460 (pretty sure I could have booked it for $360 but then I would have to arrange our own airport transportation) so we did spend $3500 for flights – which sounds outrageous but flights are outrageous now it seems – it would have been $2800 but we had to pay extra for middle of plane and extra for direct flights from Newark.

Once on the ground the trip went very well with an excellent tour director ‘Evan’ and a really good bus driver ‘Samir’ and a comfortable bus with wi-fi – no bathroom on the bus however.

4 nights in Jerusalem (including 1 pre-tour), 2 nights in Galilee, 2 nights in Tel Aviv totaling 8 nights, since we didn’t opt to add the Jordan package (6 more nights for $4000 for 2), frankly we can’t handle more than 8 nights of a guided tour because they are so jam packed and you move quickly every day.

The hotels were high quality, very responsive hotel staff if you had issues, quiet comfortable rooms with a king size bed – Dan Panorama in Jerusalem had pre-Passover restaurant restrictions but for the most part was excellent, the Galilee hotel at Ein Gev Kibbutz was less strict and a welcome change and the Dan Panorama in Tel Aviv was excellent and near enough to the Jaffa section where there were non-Jewish restaurants if you didn’t want to deal with Passover restrictions.

The trip was great for the most part, there were some minor nitpicks include shopping stops sometimes before you got to a destination, also mandatory group lunches that you had to pay for that ranged from below average to pretty good, these were all $20 to $30 per person which seems a bit high to me.

Jerusalem highlights included a great visit to Masada, the church of the Nativity, the church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Western Wall, Via Dolorosa, Israel Museum (Dead Sea scrolls), and the Holocaust Museum.

In Galilee highlights included the church of the Beatitudes, Capernaum, the Jesus boat and a short boat ride, and on another day visits to Acre, Haifa, Caesarea with lots of detailed descriptions from our tour guide included ancient architectural ruins and great photo opportunities.

In Tel Aviv we had a walking tour of the old Jaffa port area, a driving tour of the city and a very interesting and entertaining lunch with an Arab Christian woman at her home.

We had 28 travelers, so it wasn’t that crowded which was nice, everyone got along well and were from all over, USA, South Africa, Australia, Mexico and there were 2 younger travelers, 1 was 9yo and 1 about 15.

We spent a total of $11,953 including tips, cabs, meals, drinks, gifts, mementos, etc., it does seem high but that’s the cost of travel in 2023 if you go with good hotels and with a tour group.

I give this trip an 8 out of 10, it was a great experience despite all the turmoil over there, we never felt any danger and I do recommend this tour despite the expense. Good luck to all fellow travelers.

Thanks for the report. Not to nitpick, but I wouldn't want other people come across this thread and get the wrong impression about independent travel Israel. It's just as easy and safe to travel independently in Israel as it is to do so in Europe. In Israel, there aren't "middle east issues" that would make it safer to travel with a guided tour than independently.

Thanks for the TR. We were in Israel on our own for a month in Feb & into March. We went to all the places you mentioned and more obviously given the time we there. It was very easy to travel on our own. We had a guide for the Old City in Jerusalem and some nearby sites, in TelAviv for a few hours and a guide for our time at Masada. Other than that we drove ourselves until we got to the cities where we dropped the car.
In terms of security issues its pretty easy to follow along and know what is going on. I got notification that country wide protests were happening the next day and to plan transportation accordingly. We happen to be going from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by train that day so we adjusted accordingly.

In terms of cost, I thought Israel on the high end as far as countries go.

I agree with you that traveling on our own would have been my preference as well as less expensive but in order to keep marital peace i deferred to my partners desire to use a guided tour but we will continue to travel on our own in Europe and Asia in the future.

yes i agree with you but my wife wanted to try the group tour option, myself i would have like to have customized our daily itinerary and had some slow days to recover as well as hiring local day guides. This has always worked well for us in many other places in Europe and Asia. We had a good couple days on our own at the Jerusalem Shuk Mahane Yahuda and at the Israel museum and a few dinners, trips to shops and ATMs as needed.

Compromise is the name of the game. We did private guides in Egypt and was so happy to be on our own once we got to Israel. I am not cut out for daily tours.

Thank you for the TR. It brought back memories.

We had 4 days in Israel during a cruise stop. It was supposed to be two days but two days in Egypt was cancelled due to political issues there so this two days got added to Israel which ws a blessing in disguise.

We hired private guides and while expensive as Israel generally is the experience of having a private guide added immeasurably to our experience as well as going on our own pace.

We were supposed to port in Ashdod for two days buy rocket attacks from the Gaza the night before prevented that so we went to Haifa and started from there. Such is life there. However overall it was a fantastic trip. The history is amazing.

All the best.

Larry

"We hired private guides and while expensive as Israel generally is the experience of having a private guide added immeasurably to our experience as well as going on our own pace."

I agree -- private guides are fabulous and greatly enhance my experience at various places. My preferred way of traveling is on my own and pick up guides for specific sites.

Thank you.

we also had a wonderful guide when we were in Ephesus. She was like an encyclopedia of knowledge about that place and took us to a wonderful place for lunch, a local place, with all fresh food that we would’ve never found on our own.

Larry

To each his own, but sometimes the name of the game has to standing up for what's right on the big stuff ... I'd rather not go at all than be stuck on a two-week group tour

Well, we tried the group tour thing just to try it, as most say on here, not for us going forward, luckily we declined the add'l 6 nights in Jordan so we only were in the group for 7 nights and 1 night on our own. Surprisingly on the tour with us were a few people that love group tours, along with a couple of first timers (like us) that agreed it was not something we wanted to do again.

True.
To each their own.