I generally try not to leave bad reviews, but this experience what so poorly operated that I want to make sure no one else makes the same mistake in booking this tour. First of all, our hotel pick up was 20 mins late. Once our bus finally arrived, we were shuttled to a view point outside the city where we waited an hour before getting on our second bus. We then met our driver, Hassan. While he was nice, he was a very heavy smoker & his bus smelled quite musty with smoke. Hassan drove us to our first stop, the Shepherds Fields where we met our tour guide, Danny. He didn’t offer much historical information, but rather gave us a pitch as to why there were no more Christians in Bethlehem & why we should encourage Christians to move back to Palestine. It was quite strange & slightly uncomfortable. In this first stop we saw some caves where shepherds used to sell their cattle. Honestly, it wasn’t very interesting to see & it was unclear as to why this was a highlight of the tour. Then we had a brief stop at the Church of the Shepherds. Again, not a lot of historical information was given. I actually had to Wikipedia what the area was to understand what the history of what we were seeing. Then we were quickly moved back to the bus and went to the next stop, which was a very overpriced souvenir shop. There was no indication on the tour explanation page on Tripadvisor that we would be stopping at this shop. Clearly the tour guides got a commission for bringing buses here, which was frustrating, as we spent about an hour there waiting to leave for our next spot. Most of the people on the tour did not purchase anything as the items were about 3x the price for what you could also buy in the old city in Jerusalem. Most of us just sat & waited to leave. At this point our bus & driver were no where to be found. Our tour group was split up and asked to get into 2 different minivans without explanation of what was happening or where we were going, which was a bit scary. Our new driver Johnny drove us through heavy traffic to the Church of the Nativity. Again, once we got there our tour guide Danny failed to give us any historical information. Instead, he just directed us to stand in line to see the manger & the star of Bethlehem. Danny left us for a majority of the time & we were alone standing in this line with no indication of where we were or what was happening. The line was extremely disorganized. Hundreds and hundred of people were waiting in this line. Frustrated with how much time the queue was taking, several tour groups were being encouraged to skip ahead. This line took 2.5 hours before we got to see the manger. Again, Danny failed to give us any pertinent information about the church. We could have spent the 2.5 hours in line learning about the church, but again, Danny was not with us as we waited. The line was utter chaos as we inched closer to the entrance. You had to descend down some steep stairs on a very narrow path to see the manger, and all the people we cutting & shoving each other to get down there. My particular group had 3 octogenarians and it was terrifying to put them in that scenario. Once we got to the manger & the Star of Bethlehem, we had less than 2 mins to spend there as the rest of the tours were pushing to get their chance to see the manger as well. There was no order & the complete chaos made the experience awful. What was meant to be a poignant & holy stop, felt rushed and honestly quite bad as the people in line were very aggressive. Once we all exited, our tour group gathered outside & our tour guide left us again & encouraged us to “meditate” in garden. Our group was extremely frustrated at this point, as we were exhausted from standing in line. Our tour was well past the time we were meant to be back at our hotels. And because the line inside took so long, we were unable to go to our final stop, the Milk Grotto. As we left the Church, our minivans were nowhere to be found & we were asked to walk UPHILL about 800 meters to a different location. I want to remind you that our group had 3 - 80+ year olds, one who had a heart condition. An uphill climb in the heat was very challenging for them. The entire group was extremely frustrated. At this point it was 3pm. We were supposed to be back at our hotels & finished with tour by 1pm. This tour started at 7:50am & offered no meals or any stops to eat. We were well past lunchtime, starving, exhausted & very much wanted to go home. Once we stopped walking we had to wait for the 2 minivans to pick us up. The driver Danny said that the drive would only be 5 mins to next location where we were meant to meet our original driver, Hassan, who would take us back to Jerusalem. The ride was more like 20 mins & we were dropped off at a random location on a hill with nothing was around us. We waited another 20 mins until our final bus arrived. During this time I called the tour company to complain & they assured me that the driver was 4 minutes away. That was clearly not the case. Finally Hassan and our original tour bus arrived. Our whole tour group sat in silence on the ride back to Jerusalem. We were all tired, hungry, exhausted & upset with how the whole day played out. In fact, my family asked to be dropped off early once we got into town, as we were completely over this excursion. Do yourself a favor if you are interested in booking this tour. Steer clear of this company. It was a poorly run, disorganized mess. I learned more about these stops by googling info on my phone while we waited in line. My family traveled from California as this was a bucket list destination for my catholic family. What a complete disappointment the whole day was. Rest assured I will never book this company again & I encourage you to do the same.
While I cannot recall our guide's name in Bethlehem (it might have been Maria), I will attest that she (petite, brown hair, early 50s) was amazingly loving and informative and took care of our group making sure we were able to experience everything scheduled. Almost like a momma bear, she patiently answered all questions, made it so that other groups did not skip us on line and was fluent in English and Spanish (and probably other languages!). You could tell she really enjoyed her job and respected and took great pride in sharing the history of Bethlehem and more importantly, of her faith. Getting there was tricky, but not an inconvenience. If anything, riding with our personal driver (six or seven to the van) through windy Palestinian streets was an adventure, a safe and exciting adventure. Our drivers in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Bethlehem were knowledgable and drove safely. What a day!