The Coast and Galilee

Coast and Galilee

Beach life in Tel Aviv
The Crusader port of Akko
The Sea of Galilee

 Tel Aviv is worlds apart from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a millennia-old hill-top city, weighted with religious significance. Tel Aviv is a secular beachfront city that basks beneath a Mediterranean sun and is barely a century old. Visit Tel Aviv for the superb Museum of the Jewish Diaspora and the similarly  impressive Tel Aviv Museum of Art and for its unrivalled heritage of whitewashed Bauhaus architecture. Also visit for the shopping, dining and nightlife, in which the city excels.

 Don’t miss the neighbouring ancient port of Jaffa (with its attractive harbour-side buildings, several of which house good seafood restaurants. North along the coast, Akko is another old Arab port, although heavily shaped by the Crusaders, for whom this was one of their principal strongholds. It remains perhaps the most attractive old town in the entire Holy Land. Away from the coast, the Sea of Galilee  is Israel’s largest freshwater body. It has significant biblical links (it is where Jesus is said to have walked on the water), as well as a beautiful setting ringed by green hills.