Shalom, lovely friends!

In case you missed it, last time I shared a few highlights, lowlights, and takeaways from our recent trip to Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Today I’m offering my thoughts on traveling with a tour group, plus a few recs and resources, and my answer to the number-one question people ask, Did we feel safe?

On traveling with a tour group

We engaged a tour company to usher us through from beginning to end. Yep, pros and cons to doing that, but for us, a definite net positive. As a family that usually DIYs our trips, my husband, Scott, and I especially relished relinquishing the logistical details to the pros, leaving us free to relax and enjoy.

One significant downside, of course, was lack of control over the details. We had a schedule, and for the sake of the group, we stuck to it. That said, there really were only a few times when we might have wanted more time somewhere. Rather, a few times we actually wanted less. Our schedule was very full, especially at the start in Israel. This left us with less downtime or opportunity to enjoy our sometimes-spectacular accommodations than we might have preferred. It also necessitated some early start times—a handful of days, our meetup time was as early as 8 or 8:30, once 6:30, and on one occasion—in order to catch an early-morning flight—3 a.m. (I know, right?)

Speaking of accommodations, our tour company allowed travelers to choose from four different tiers of accommodations—comfort, superior, deluxe, and executive. We chose “superior,” thinking that this would get us comfortable but modest digs, but I have to tell you our lodgings far exceeded expectations. We felt quite spoiled, never as if we were economizing. On top of that, we received exemplary service everywhere we stayed.

In terms of meal plans, we opted for the bed-and-breakfast option, leaving us (for the most part) responsible for remaining meals on our own. This suited us just fine.

A couple of other notes. Ours was an Israeli tour company. Our guide in Israel was Jewish, and in Jordan and Egypt our guides were all at least nominally Muslim. In Israel, especially, our guide made careful effort to provide Christian context for the sites we were seeing, and while she was extremely knowledgeable, we did not receive a thorough Christian perspective. This had its pros and cons. Scott and I rather appreciated the different lens, but our kids wished for a more explicitly Christian viewpoint.

We did not know anyone in our tour group ahead of time. The majority were Americans, with two New Zealanders. Every traveler was very pleasant, and we all got along just fine for the duration, growing more comfortable with each other as we went along. It was all very natural, no forced familiarity, each of us free to be as introverted or as extroverted as we so desired.

Also. You guys, it’s a lot to take in! By Day 3 in Israel we were feeling saturated with info and somewhat numb to the wonders of what we were witnessing. By the time we got the latter part of our trip in Egypt, we found ourselves walking quite casually through temples and tombs four thousand years old. Not sure what’s to be done about that—there’s only so much a person can absorb and process all at once. On the plus side, now that we’re a month past it, I can truthfully say that I continue to process and appreciate everything all the more in retrospect.

One extra tip

If you can tolerate the heat, I recommend visiting late-June to early-July, as we did. This puts you outside the high-tourist season of March through mid-June. Personally, I’d so much rather deal with heat than crowds, which, I understand, can be monstrous and suck the joy right out of it. It also costs a little less, and if you go with a tour group, means that the size of your tour group will likely to be much smaller. Our Israeli guide told us, for example, that she was so happy to be leading our group of 15 (which gradually, through attrition, dwindled to nine) instead of the group she’d led the week before, in high season, of fifty-seven.

Did we feel safe?

The most-asked question we get about this particular trip, not unreasonably. While we were aware of the risks of traveling to these regions, we considered them minimal, and yes, we did feel safe. Here are some reasons why.

In the month before our departure, we kept an eye on the travel advisory map published by the U.S. State Department, which apprises travelers of security hotspots around the world. At the time we traveled, while Egypt and Jordan posed a slightly higher risk, the risk of traveling in Israel rated the same as, say, most of Europe, where we would not have hesitated to go.

The state of Israel takes their national security very seriously, and thus screening to enter and even exit the country is rigorous. For our family of four, that simply meant more questions, particularly for our young-adult children. On our final departure from Israel at the airport, we witnessed a young man in his twenties being particularly (but quite courteously) grilled by an Israeli security agent. We understand that’s pretty par for the course. For more on security entering and leaving Israel, read this.

We’d heard that as Westerners, in Egypt we would likely be assigned security detail, and indeed we were for our days in Cairo. A government-issued security guy accompanied our group of nine everywhere we stopped, unobtrusive but watchful. While I’m sure he was there more for the Egyptian government’s peace of mind than ours, we certainly didn’t object to the extra layer of security.

As it happened, our family was in Israel while the country was undergoing some of its greatest civil unrest in the last two decades. Our rooms in Tel Aviv were directly across the street from the U.S. Embassy consulate, and indeed on our last night in Israel we were able to watch what we understood to be nightly protests from our balcony. Everything we witnessed was peaceful, respectful, and non-violent. We didn’t feel threatened for a minute, not even when we were on the streets mingling with the crowds as we walked back from dinner. Our only concern was that the protests might block our route to the airport the next morning, but we were assured that wouldn’t be a problem, and indeed it was not.

Resources

Tour company. Noah Tours guided us throughout and took care of every detail, from border visas to entry tickets to air travel within the region. We received friendly, responsive, professional service from A to Z.

Videos. For decades, our go-to guy for guiding us throughout Europe, Rick Steves, now also offers some material on the Near East. We enjoyed this video on Israel and this one on Egypt beforehand to get us primed.

Books. My husband gave me The Holy Land Devotional: Inspirational Reflections from the Land Where Jesus Walked by John A. Beck, and I gave him The Holy Land for Christian Travelers: An Illustrated Guide to Israel by the same author. Both provide outstanding supplemental and complementary material that focuses especially on the significance of the region’s geography. Meaningful reading before, during, and after a trip to the Holy Land.

And more. After our return, Scott stumbled on this gifted lecturer, Bruce Gore, M.A., J.D., and creator of a collection of hundreds of audio and video lectures that he’s presented for over 30 years in Christian education. Many of these were taken from his instruction at Whitworth University, where he’s been a longtime adjunct professor. Scott and I have been bingeing on his material ever since we got back. Bruce offers a “wide ranging series of lectures [that acquaint viewers] with the major personalities and civilizations that comprise the context of the biblical story. The stories of the Bible take on rich meaning as they are understood against the backdrop of the great events of the ancient world.”

After lapping up all of Bruce’s material on the pharaohs of Egypt, Scott and I started back at the beginning with ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia and are now methodically making our way through to the Roman world of the New Testament. As of this writing, I’m on episode 33 (Tiberius and Christian Beginnings) and have no intention of stopping until I’ve seen or listened to everything Bruce has in this series and others on Christian history. We’ve also added his excellent and thorough book, Historical and Chronological Context of the Bible, to our library.

Finally…

When our family set out a year ago to plan this adventure, we said we’d in all likelihood go only once, so best to include as much as we could and make the most of it. We feel we did pretty well in that regard, especially in Egypt. However, there’s always something that gets missed, and Scott is already saying we need to go back. So, we’ll see! God willing, someday…

I’d love to hear about your summer, and if you’ve been to the Holy Land, would you add to or amend any of my recommendations?

Shalom!

🌸 Katherine