エルサレムからの5日間のイスラエルツアー：死海、ナザレ、マサダ

Bein Harim is the best! Prompt, communicative, organized, reasonably priced with excellent guides. They make sure to account for everyone, and are willing to help with special situations such as needing to get dropped off somewhere other than the normal stops. Dorit, Daniel, and Tomar were all above average guides. They are well read, know their history both Christian and Jewish, and easy to talk to. Having never been to Israel, I learned so much about the people, the country, and the history. They were willing to share personal stories that added even more to their descriptions. I would go with them again, for sure.

It was a perfect tour for me. Full of history, religion and politics. Everything that I like to know about. The guides were excelent, but I make a special congrats to Ami (former colonel of the Golani Division) - he knows everything about the military strugle of Israel to become a country and gave us unforgetable lessons about it; also a great applause to Yoav Malachi, that took us to Nazareth, for his competency and knowledge; and for Amr Koovar (??? - they should send us an email with their names) that took us to Haifa, Acre and Hosh Hanikra on 25/11. This guy is a crazy one. Energetic and full of opinions. One of the best guides a tourist could get.

I took four tours with Bein Harim (booked through Tourist Israel). I'll review them separately because the quality was so different with each of them. General notes- they never picked me up at my hotel and they were always AT LEAST 15 minutes late (sometimes an hour). They're also always bilingual which is problematic for the reasons below. Caesarea, Haifa, Rosh Hanikra, Akko- My pickup time was 5:50am from Jerusalem. I walked the 10 minutes to the pickup point and waited outside for a while. At 6:05 I asked the receptionist at the random hotel if she could call. She got in touch with someone who asked to speak with me. He asked if I would like to go on a different tour instead because no one else is leaving from Jerusalem for that tour. I said no because I was completely booked all week and Caesarea was a must-see for me. They sent a taxi at around 6:30 am, 40 minutes from my pickup time. When it's that early in the morning, that extra 40 minutes would have been great. They never had any intention of sending someone to get me, which is alarming. Guide- Jacob. He was so focused on making jokes I didn't feel I got much out of the tour. The tour was bilingual, English and German, but at least 70% of it was in German (even though there was one German family who indicated English was fine for them). It took double the time to get through the sights and it just seemed like he was trying to practice his German. He would start sentences in English, finish in German, and never go back to explain what he said in English. He was too focused on his shtick making fun of people to actually tell us anything about Akko the Crusader city. We didn't eat until after 2:30 pm which meant I left my hotel at 5:30 before breakfast and didn't eat until 9 hours later. And it was the worst meal I'd ever had. I asked when we were going to eat because I'm type 1 diabetic and it's necessary information, and he made a big joke to everyone that he'll make sure I'm the first one to get food. It was just annoying and embarrassing. Jerusalem Old City Tour- Another bilingual tour, this time, French. Unpleasant as usual but in includes a good tour of the things you want to see in Jerusalem and the Holocaust Museum, which is a must-see. Guide- Liat. She was really nice and informative. She made the hot day enjoyable. My only qualm would be that she was constantly making us wait in the sun for stragglers. She could have wrangled the French people a bit better. Masada/Dead Sea- Masada is amazing and the Dead Sea is eh, but that has nothing to do with Bein Harim. When you get to the Dead Sea, do not eat in that restaurant at the top. The food is way overpriced. There's a falafel stand down by the beach at the "lowest bar in the world." Guide- Charlie. He was wonderful. Told us everything we needed to know about Masada and made it fun. It was over 100 degrees up at Masada and he was careful to move us into the shade for the informational portions. You can tell he really cares about his job and his country. Couldn't ask for a better guide. It was a bilingual tour but once he realized the two French women were fine in English (as they indicated) he kept it to English and only spoke French if they needed clarification. Nazareth, Capernaum, Sea of Galilee- Do not do this tour from Jerusalem. My pickup was at 5:50am-6:20am (thirty minute pickup window?) and the bus finally came around 6:15, so I waited outside, in the dark by myself from 5:50. We ended up getting to Tel Aviv to the meetup point at 7am, an hour early. There was no reason to pick us up at 5:50am when it's a Saturday so it's Shabbat and no one is on the road, and it never took more than an hour from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv anyway, never mind 2 hours as they budgeted. So we had to waste an hour in Tel Aviv before we could pick up the people touring from there. We got to the pickup point and the bus meeting us was late. We didn't get to the first stop until 10:15am, so over 4 hours from my pickup time. Which brings me to the guide. Guide- Eli. We very much started off on the wrong foot. At 8 am, when I had been traveling for over 2 hours and we were sitting on the side of the road in Tel Aviv, I asked him when we would be getting to Nazareth. He basically told me that if I expected to get to Nazareth from Jerusalem right away I would be disappointed (4 hours is not exactly right away...). He was super unpleasant about it and didn't even apologize for having us lollygag around Tel Aviv. He gave me pretty serious attitude. I asked to speak to his supervisor to see if I could be put on a different tour, but he just offered to talk to him. That would only make it worse so I just got on the bus and sat there. On the way to Nazareth, we basically got a rundown of Arab cities in Jerusalem and how the situation with Jews and Arabs is not black and white. I was expecting to hear a little bit about Jesus of Nazareth, since he's the reason every single person on the tour was going there. We didn't get one piece of info about his teachings or his life. We arrived at Nazareth and were shepherded into a souvenir store. By 10:15 am, we finally reached the church. Once we were there, Eli was good about explaining things and gave us a sufficient amount of time. Oh, this one was bilingual Spanish and again, it was pretty miserable. Two women repeatedly refused to get to the bus on time, making us wait for 30 minutes for them at one point. Eli should have been on top of them. It was beyond rude. Eli did apologize for his earlier behavior and gave me the lunch for free, which was nice and went a long way toward making me feel a little better about the tour. Capernam was really cool and he did a good job explaining. Once we got to the Sea of Galilee, our last stop, we waited again for the two women and it made us even later getting home. TL;DR- Lots of timing problems. Guides hit or miss. Every single tour is bilingual. Waste a TON of time.

<p>The first day of the tour was pure hell. Our itinerary said that our first day would be a tour of Jerusalem with an 8:30 a.m. pick up. We got a call at 6:00 a.m. telling us that we were late for our tour. We had 10 minutes to pack and head down to the bus. We ended up taking a bus to the Northern region of Israel. We were hungry, angry and completely unprepared.</p>