Rick Steves Israel tour??

Give is office a call. They will tell you!

That would be fabulous. One place we want to go but not on our own. The Churches usually take groups but it is around 50 people per trip, too many.

So, at Diane's suggestion, I did email the RS office, and got this nice reply:

At this time we do not do tours in Israel, nor is anything planned for the future (of course you never know).
Our tour area is just Europe.
It is the region that Rick says he will only do because he knows it so well.

Maybe with enough demand he will reconsider- I am keeping my fingers crossed!

I wish!! I would be among the first to sign up. Please let us know if you do find out anything?
Edit to add: cross posting. Thanks for the update and if there is enough interest, it just might be scheduled!

There are other tours. I recently met one of the forum members who was on an excellent Gate1 tour. I deem it excellent from her reports and from their itinerary.

But you don't need a tour! If you have gone to Europe independently, you can do it here just as well. There's good public transportation for the major cities and driving is not difficult - roads are good and signage is also in English. It's hard to find a place where English isn't spoken. Sights have the same explanations (written and audio) in English and Hebrew.

I’m the forum member Chani mentioned. We did indeed do a Gate One tour. Here’s our itinerary: https://www.gate1travel.com/mediterranean/israel/2019/escorted/deluxe-israel-jordan-16ddlxoljo20.aspx

It was fantastic. This was a deluxe, small group tour, so there were 24 people and the hotels were truly top notch. You could also do one of Gate One’s other tours - they have other small group options listed on their site (along with their larger group tours, so look carefully),

Look in my bio on this site and you can see tons of tour details and pictures - it’s all recent as we were just there last month.

And if you go all the way to Israel, try to get to Jordan too - it was awesome.

mj,

You might have a look at this firm - https://www.insightvacations.com/ca/destinations/north-africa-and-asia/israel . They're "sort of" like Rick Steves tours, with smaller groups (usually no more than 40). They enforce the group size by actually removing seats from the bus!

Chani...you could be Rick's first tour guide in Israel!

Heaven forfend!

I'm more than happy to promote my amazing country as a terrific tourist destination but guides here go through rigorous training program before they can be licensed - history (about 5000 years worth), archaeology, religion (virtually all the monotheistic ones), geology, . . .

Reid Coen, who was (and may still be) one of Rick's tour guides, does a tour to Israel. His company is called Imprint Tours. The next one is in late February and it looks like it still has room. The ours are run very much like Rick's tours, and Reid is terrific.