The tour was really well organised, and it took us to two high profile, must see destinations in Israel. But the the really strong part of this review is for Marco Alexander, our fantastic tour guide. He was extremely knowledgeable, friendly, and available. He spoke at least two or three languages fluently, and possibly more.
As a mother tongue Italian/English speaker, he was great for our family (as we are Italian and English), and I would certainly recommend him to other Italian tourists. Whilst Italian was not formally part of the tour, he had no issue switching between languages for our benefit.
He was very engaging with all members of the group, and we thoroughly enjoyed his company for the day. Having a tour guide like that really makes a huge difference, and we came away exhausted, but having had a very enjoyable experience.
On the specifics of the tour – Masada was fantastic, worth every minute. We then stopped midway between Masada and the Dead Sea for lunch, – I believe it was the Dead Sea, Scrolls tourist centre, and honestly, the food was terrible, overpriced, and it was a rather chaotic and disappointing experience. This is not the fault of the tour company, but I would urge them to either consider an alternative, or to tell guests to bring snacks with them before we set off. It really was terrible.
The dead sea was great – very busy, but a well developed, tourist centre. It was quite treacherous getting in and out of the sea, as the mud was wet and lots of people were slipping. And elderly gentleman in our group fell over and hurt himself. But again, this is not feedback for the tour company.
Overall, well organised and efficient.
The bus picks us up from our hotel and dropped us off in the evening.
I was supposed to have a 7:20am pickup at the hotel. I saw the minibus and spoke to the driver including showing him my tickets and was told this was not my tour. That the next bus would be there in about 20 minutes. When no next bus came a nice taxi driver called the tour operator and was told they would call the hotel front desk to let me know what was going on. We waited about 15 minutes and then the concierge called and was told a taxi would pick us up. When we finally caught up with the bus it was the same driver I spoke to at the hotel. because of this the whole bus had to wait for us and the tour seemed very rushed because they had to make up the time to be able to get tp the Dead Sea before the area closed.