Israel is a small country. The days out are not.
Which Masada run really gets you up for the sunrise. What a guided morning inside the Old City costs against a full day with Bethlehem attached. Whether the Galilee is worth a whole day from Tel Aviv. Reviews of every tour you can book in Israel.
Jerusalemfrom $7
Masada & the Dead Seafrom $44
The Galileefrom $45
Four days that carry a first week in Israel.
The Old City on foot, the drive down to Masada, the north around the lake and the Roman coast. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it say.
01The desert dayMasada & Dead Sea Full Day Tour with Pick UpUp Masada by cable car, then the float at the Dead Sea. More travellers take this one day than anything else in the country.
02The Old City morningGuided Walking Tour of the Old CityFour quarters, one guide, a couple of hours on foot. The cheapest way to make the walls make sense.
03The day up northGuided Day Trip to Nazareth & Sea of GalileeNazareth, Capernaum and the shore of the Sea of Galilee, out and back before dinner.
04The Roman coastCaesarea, Haifa and Akko Day TripCaesarea harbour, the hanging gardens above Haifa, the Crusader tunnels under Akko.
Everyone gets a day inside the walls. There are four ways to spend it.
The Old City is one square kilometre and it takes a guide to read. Two hours on foot, a full day that adds the Mount of Olives and the new city, the route the Gospels follow, or your own guide for the afternoon.
Six places to run a day out from, and the best of each.
Two cities an hour apart, a sea you float in rather than swim, a green north around a freshwater lake, the hill towns below Jerusalem, and a desert that runs to the Red Sea. Pick a base; the rest is a morning drive.
Everything east of Jerusalem runs downhill and gets hotter.
The road drops through the Judean desert to the lowest land on the planet in under an hour. Masada at the top of it, Ein Gedi springs halfway along, and salt water that holds you up at the bottom. One day covers all three, and nearly every operator sells the same shape of it.
Above Nazareth the country turns green and stays that way.
A freshwater lake with basalt shores, the Jordan running out of the bottom of it, Roman streets at Beit Shean and the Golan rising behind. Two hours from Tel Aviv and it stops looking like the same country.
Tel Aviv is ninety years old and Jaffa is four thousand. They share a beach.
Everything in Tel Aviv →
White Bauhaus blocks going brown in the salt air, a market that feeds the city, a port that was old when Rome was new. The whole thing is walkable, flat, and best done before the heat lands.
- 1Tel Aviv Jaffa Guided Bike Tourfrom $62
- 22 Day Tour to Petra and Wadi Rum from Tel Avivfrom $399
- 3Day Tour to Petra by Bus from Tel Avivfrom $299
Jaffa, Neve Tzedek, the Bauhaus blocks
Down through the oldest streets in the city to the port, then back up into the white modernist grid the city was planned on. Flat the whole way and mostly in shade.
Carmel Market, eaten properly
The shuk runs from clothes at the top to fish and spice at the bottom, and a guide gets you fed at the eight stalls worth stopping at instead of the first one with a queue.
The promenade, the port and old Jaffa
The seafront path runs unbroken from the port in the north to Jaffa in the south, and a bike covers in three hours what walking spreads over two days.
The days out more travellers book than any other in Israel.
Every Israeli tour we have reviewed →Almost all of them are one long coach day with a guide, leaving Tel Aviv or Jerusalem early. Here is what earns each of them the slot.
1
Masada & Dead Sea Full Day Tour with Pick Up
Travel from Tel Aviv by air-conditioned coach to Masada, ride the cable car to King Herod’s fortress, then float in the Dead Sea and use its mineral mud. Your guide explains the history and scenery along the way, with a view of the Qumran caves on the return drive. Guides may lead in English, French, Spanish, or German.
From · $117
Read our review →
2
Jerusalem and Bethlehem Guided Day Trip
from $118
3
Masada and the Dead Sea Day Trip from Tel Aviv
from $120
4
Jerusalem, Bethlehem & Dead Sea
from $109
5
Guided Day Trip to Nazareth & Sea of Galilee
from $98
6
Jerusalem Old & New City Bus Tour
from $95
7
Masada & Dead Sea Full Day Tour with Pick Up
from $111
8
Masada and the Dead Sea Day Trip from Jerusalem
from $111
Past Beersheba the map empties out and the rock turns red.
Four hours below Jerusalem the Negev opens into a crater forty kilometres long, sandstone canyons the colour of rust, and a resort town on a sliver of Red Sea coast where the coral starts a few metres offshore.
Every day out in the Negev →
Two towns south and east of Jerusalem, both older than the city itself.
Manger Square and the church built over the grotto, then down through the Judean hills to Jericho, a thousand feet below sea level and by most counts the oldest continuously inhabited town on earth. Half a day covers one, a full day covers both.
- 1Jerusalem and Bethlehem Guided Day Tripfrom $118
- 2Day Tour to Jerusalem and Bethlehem from Tel Avivfrom $121
- 3Jerusalem and Bethlehem Day Tour from Jerusalemfrom $106
What a day out in Israel actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A guided morning inside the Old City costs less than the ride in from the airport.
Old City walks, museum entries, market tastings and the short hops around Tel Aviv.
The full-day standards: Masada and the Dead Sea, Nazareth and the lake, the Roman coast.
Private guides, multi-day runs and the Petra crossings into Jordan.
- 1Day Tour to Petra from Eilatfrom $219
- 22-Day Petra Tour from Jerusalemfrom $420
- 32 Day Tour to Petra and Wadi Rum from Tel Avivfrom $399
Three things that happen nowhere else on the map.
Ruins and hot coastlines are everywhere around this sea. Water you cannot sink in, a fortress on a plateau above it, and a cliff you go down inside are not.
Floating in the Dead Sea
The shoreline sits about 430 metres below sea level and drops a little further every year. The water is roughly ten times saltier than the Mediterranean, which means you do not swim in it so much as sit on it. Ten minutes is the sensible limit, the mud on the north beaches is the other half of the point, and any cut you had forgotten about will remind you.
- 1Masada & Dead Sea Full Day Tour with Pick Up★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,496 reviews
- 2Masada and the Dead Sea Day Trip from Tel Aviv★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,014 reviews
- 3Jerusalem, Bethlehem & Dead Sea★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 881 reviews
Masada before the heat
Herod built a palace complex on a rock that stands 400 metres clear of the desert floor, and it was still standing when the Romans laid siege to it seventy years after his death. The cable car runs up the east face; the Snake Path takes about 45 minutes on foot. Either way the plateau is exposed, so the tours that leave in the dark are not showing off.
- 1Masada & Dead Sea Full Day Tour with Pick Up★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,496 reviews
- 2Masada and the Dead Sea Day Trip from Tel Aviv★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,014 reviews
- 3Masada & Dead Sea Full Day Tour with Pick Up★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 815 reviews
The Rosh Hanikra grottoes
At the very top of the coast the chalk cliff runs straight into the water and the sea has cut tunnels through it. A cable car drops you down the face and you walk the caves from inside, with the swell coming through the openings. Rough weather shuts the whole thing, which is why the day is usually sold with Caesarea and Akko attached.
- 1Caesarea, Haifa and Akko Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 744 reviews
- 2Caesarea, Rosh Hanikra and Acre Day Trip from Tel Aviv★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 406 reviews
- 3Caesarea, Haifa & Akko Day Trip from Jerusalem★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 96 reviews
Four Israeli bookings that will not wait until the morning.
Most of this country can be sorted the night before from a hotel lobby. These four run on sunrise, border hours, a cable car and a market that keeps the week.
- 01Masada at Sunrise, Ein Gedi & Dead Sea TourThe plateau is worth it at first light and punishing by midday. The departures that reach the top in time leave in the dark, and there are only a handful of them.
- 02Day Tour to Petra from EilatThe day crosses a land border into Jordan. The crossing keeps its own hours, and the paperwork is done before you travel rather than on the morning.
- 03Carmel Market Tasting Tour – LocaLocalThe market winds down on Friday afternoon and does not open on Saturday, so a food walk here has five mornings to fit into, not seven.
- 04Caesarea, Rosh Hanikra and Acre Day Trip from Tel AvivThe grottoes are reached by a cable car down the cliff face, and a heavy sea closes it. That is why the run is sold with Caesarea and Akko attached.
Between May and October, plan around eleven to four.
Inland the summer sits in the high thirties and the Dead Sea basin goes higher still, with no shade anywhere on the desert sites. The answer is the local one: start at seven, stop at eleven, and put the good walking back on at five when the stone has come off the boil.
Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Galilee: the run almost everybody does first.
Tel Aviv
Bethlehem
EilatBy place — cities, coast, desert
By kind of day — on foot, by jeep, by coach
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