Category: Middle East

Jerusalem vs. Tel Aviv: The Ultimate Israeli Cocktail Showdown

I’m going to let you in on a secret: we had not one, but two itineraries for our recent trip to Israel.

One, of course, was the official daily trip itinerary provided to us by Honeymoon Israel for all nine days of our trip to the Holy Land. But we had a second list, one that resided in the shadows and was only good for the hours of 9 PM to 2 AM: where to drink the best cocktails in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

And so in between visits to holy sites and various outdoor activities, we set out to find the answer to one of our burning questions for the trip: Which Israeli city makes better cocktails, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv?  Read More

The Truth About Hiking Up Masada, Israel’s Desert Fortress

I wiped the dripping sweat off of my brow, panting under the blistering morning sun. Pausing to take a swig of cool, refreshing water, I gazed up to the top of the mountain and was suddenly troubled by how tiny the hikers approaching the summit appeared.

You can’t stop now, I thought wearily. Remember what you promised yourself?

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Why You Should Visit the Holy Land with Honeymoon Israel

Mere hours after our plane touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, the questions started coming: “How was your trip to Israel?” “What was your favorite part?” “Did you feel safe?”

It’s taken a week to write up our first blog post about our recent trip to Israel. (That’s practically a decade century in the blogosphere.) There’s so much to unpack, both literally and metaphorically, from our nine days in the Holy Land.

We tried to perfect the 60-second elevator pitch, something along the lines of “It was great! We went to Jerusalem, floated in the Dead Sea, partied in Tel Aviv and made some fantastic new friends.” But what I really wanted to say to these people was, I could talk to you for over an hour about this, and still not get through everything we saw and experienced: how we were moved by the convergence of three religions in a city we’d only read about in books; how we challenged ourselves to hike the Snake Path at Masada and emerged triumphantly at the summit; how we gazed across the Syrian border and saw smoke in the distance; how we laughed and cried while discussing what it means to be part of a family that is blending religious traditions.

So here, over several blog entries, I’m going to try to give you a sense of why our trip to Israel with Honeymoon Israel was so profound and thought-provoking for us.

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