Israel Trip recommendations

Chani is our only regular contributor living in Israel. Hopefully she will see your post. She's on a different time zone, of course, so it may be tomorrow or a couple of days before you see any post on this thread from her.

Bethlehem is a good Palestinian city to visit, a suburb of Jerusalem. Also Jericho and Nazareth.

And you could spend a week in the Old Quarters of Jerusalem, fascinating city.

You'll find more Israeli locals on TripAdvisor.

What time of year are you going?
That would help us to help you.

I am going from June 18-25, so during Ramadan.

Thanks for the info jb, look for a post on this thread from Chani.

Hi, here I am.

First, going to Petra can be done easily as a day trip from Tel Aviv. Look at Arkia and Israir for flights from Sde Dov airport to Eilat. The airport is a 5-minute taxi ride from most hotels. Get the first flight out and a return flight after 7 p.m. You can either book a guided tour with an Israeli company (Desert EcoTours would be my choice) or through Jordanians (I have no information on that). The typical Desert EcoTours would pick you up at the airport and take you through the border procedures. You walk across the border and a Jordanian tour guide meets you and at the end of the day, returns you to the border, etc. If you want to go independently, you can get a driver in Aqaba to take you to Petra and back to the border. It's a couple hours drive from Aqaba to Petra. It's a 5-10 minute taxi ride from the border to the Eilat airport. Forget about Amman - first you have to get your Jordanian visa in advance, second there can be long delays crossing the border in either direction.

With or without Petra, 8 days is a short time here. Forget spontaneous, June is pretty high season here. Look at Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem. That's probably your best bet, good location, and they offer some relatively inexpensive days tours. A good one is Masada/Dead Sea. If you choose a day trip to Petra, you'll want to spend at least 2 nights in Tel Aviv. If you skip that, you may find 2 or 3 nights in Acre (Akko) better - lots of history and interesting sights, easy access to Haifa by train, buses to Nazareth (not Palestinian but an Arab city).

Spend the rest in Jerusalem. You can day trip to Bethlehem and/or Ramallah by bus (both are Palestinian).

One more thing. Ben-Gurion Airport is shown as Tel Aviv. In fact, it is outside the city on the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. You can get to/from Tel Aviv by train from the airport. Trains run at least hourly all night. To/from Jerusalem, take a Nesher shared taxi ("sherut"). From Jerusalem, you have to book about 24 hours in advance. Allow at least 3 hours for check-in and security procedures. It may go quickly, but it may take that long.

Hi Chani, I see your response on day trip from Tel Aviv to Petra and I have some related questions that I'm wondering if you can help with. I plan to visit Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Petra, and Dubai in one trip. I'm planning to fly to Tel Aviv, spend a couple of days, then take bus to Jerusalem, spend a few days, then travel from Jerusalem to Amman then to Petra. Or should I get back to Tel Aviv and take a flight to Eilat as you suggested? Is the border crossing much easier at Eilat? In that case maybe I should visit Jerusalem first and then Tel Aviv since from TLV airport it's about the same distance.

The other bottleneck for me is that there seems to be no direct flight from Tel Aviv to Dubai (most require transfer) but there're a lot of direct flight options from Amman to Dubai. So I was planning to travel from Petra to Amman and fly from there to Dubai. I don't mind getting a Jordan visa.