Interested in holy land travel

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Convert3

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I’m looking for anyone who has traveled to the holy land to share their experience and suggestions for planning. I don’t know exactly when I hope to go, but I’d like to start planning a trip sometime soon.
Are there any travel agencies/packages you’d recommend?
When is the best time to go?
What are the things you must see?
How much did you spend?
Please share anything you think I should consider before booking a trip.
 
If it’s your first time, I recommend you go with a parish group. They will make sure you see all the Catholic highlights and usually they have Mass daily as well. It is often a bit cheaper to go with the parish group, and in places like Jerusalem it can be hard to find accommodation if you aren’t from a group.

There is a LOT to see, expect to be tired and a bit rushed around if you decide to go the group route, but on the plus side they bus you everywhere and usually breakfast and dinner are included. It’s not all that easy to get around the Holy Land, it doesn’t have trains like in Europe.

The things you must see are of course the Holy Sepulchre, also the Nativity location in Bethlehem, and I also liked the boat trip on the Sea of Galilee. I also liked the Wailing Wall and the Garden if Gethsemane. And I took an add-on tour that included the museum with the Dead Sea Scrolls (we had seen the area where the scrolls were found a couple days previous) and a giant model of Jerusalem in the time of Christ that was just something else.

I now find it much easier to meditate on the Mysteries and to imagine the Bible stories as I have seen the locations in person. I hope to go back one day.

If you’re from USA, take a lot of dollars because most places accept the dollar so you don’t need to change them into shekels, and the cash machines over there would not take any of my cards. I travel quite a bit and I could always in any other country get one of my cards to work, but not there.
 
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Very briefly, your local parish probably arranges pilgrimages, through a specialized travel agency. Have a look at the bulletin board.

I would warmly recommend getting this book, as long as possible in advance of your trip, so that when you arrive you will already have a clear idea of your priorities. It will tell you everything you need to know about the history and archeology of the Holy Land. The author (now deceased) is an Irish Dominican who lived most of his adult life in Jerusalem.

If there’s anything more specific you’d like to ask, go ahead. However, there is some information, such as prices, that I can’t really help you with, since it’s been nearly ten years now that I was last in Israel.

 
Are your cards Cirrus network or something else? I will admit I only had time to try 3 ATMs because fortunately I hit the problem on my last day there and was able to borrow a couple dollars for lunch the next day and pay for everything else with my credit cards. I was quite shocked. One of my cards is State Department issued and it’s supposed to work everywhere.
 
I think you gave a good summery of the places to see. We did a twelve day tour in October 2008 and still had sweltering days around 40c. We had a float in the Dead Sea, just don’t get salt in your eyes. Masada; which you go up on a cable car; was the site hundreds of Jews committed suicide; rather than fall into the hands of the Romans, worth a trip if you can.

Someone in our group described Jerusalem as a religious theme park. You could queue up for an hour to get into many of the holy shrines. Once you were at the place you wanted to be, there was little time for reflection and prayer, because there was an hours queue behind you.

For me the most profound place I visited was the Dome of the Rock. It is said to be the most sacred place on Earth; where all the prayers of all religions go to, before they go up to God. This is the site of the original Temple built on Mount Moriah, where Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son, it is where the first and second Temple were built.

When you walk in the central parts of Jerusalem, there are wells that are maybe 3 -4 meters deep, this is were the road was in the time of Christ. They have uncovered some shops which again were about 3 - 4 meters below the current road level. Many of the Christian sites are inside the Muslim area of the old city, this is surrounded by the Jews, we did get searched by police a couple of times.

Our Jewish guide asked us to be philosophical about the places we visited. She showed us two places where the last supper may have happened. One was an upper room above the tomb of King David, because Jesus was of the line of David. The second place was a cellar. This made sense because it would have been about the height of an upper room two thousand years ago, you take your pick.

There were two possible sites for the tomb of Jesus, one was the Holy Sepulchre. The other was the garden tomb in the side of rocks which seem to match the Biblical description more accurately. On some sites there was a church. mosque and a synagogue, linking the three Abrahamic religions to an event.

Mount Tabor, the place of the Transfiguration is worth seeing. You need nerves of steel if you go up in a taxi. The drivers think it is fun to go round hair pin bends with one hand on the wheel, whilst they turn round and chat to you in the back seat. I found the villages around Galilee to be a much more peaceful and reflective places to visit.

I first went to Jerusalem in 1965, when much of the city was within the borders of Jordan. It was at a much slower pace, and we had time to reflect and pray, but sadly I did not understand much at the time.
 
Eric_Hyom said:
Masada; which you go up on a cable car; was the site hundreds of Jews committed suicide; rather than fall into the hands of the Romans, worth a trip if you can.
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Yeah, this is the one thing my tour skipped. We saw Caesarea and Megiddo but not Masada. I want to see it because I remember a miniseries about it on TV when I was in high school, that my Latin teacher wanted us all to watch because it showed a fairly decent (in her opinion) depiction of Roman warfare/ history. I watched part of it but not the whole thing and have wanted to watch it again and of course would like to see the real Masada. When and if I go back I will visit there.

The other things I didn’t get to do was go in the church above Peter’s house at Capernaum (we saw the rest of Capernaum but the church had a Mass going on and we were not allowed in) and take the cable car ride at Jericho (we could see it going by but not ride it). And of course we all wished there was much more time to spend in Jerusalem itself just wandering around.

We did get to the Dead Sea, that was touristy but fun. One of the priests was out in the water taking photos in his black clerical outfit and Roman collar but with his pants rolled up to the knees.
 
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I haven’t been myself, but the people I know who have been definitely recommend signing up for a pilgrimage that has a priest attached to the group, who provides daily Mass. Not only is it a nice extra to put you in the right mindset-- because, as was mentioned above, many of the great and famous destination churches in Europe and the Middle East are so full of tourists and tourists-waiting-to-get-in, it can be hard to appreciate the sacred atmosphere-- but when you make the shift from “tour” to “pilgrimage”, the information you’re presented with is also presented through a more spiritual filter, if that makes sense? For example, I don’t remember what the pilgrimage organization was called, but I remembered whoever it had been, the guides/organizers had spoken freely of the different miracles they had encountered with previous pilgrimage groups. So it’s sort of the difference between the “see where all this famous stuff happened a long time ago” vs “all that plus encountering glimpses of something that’s still at work today”, if that makes sense.
 
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It was just my ordinary bank card, probably Visa, I think, but it’s been a long time …
 
If you went years ago, they likely stepped up bank security. I heard there were some issues specific to Israel that make it not so easy.
One can still go to the local bank branch and get cash somehow but it would be very time consuming and when you’re on a pilgrimage tour you just don’t have time for that stuff.
 
It could be that your card was closed to international payments and withdrawals. I close and open my card to different regions in the world when I travel. Takes about 2 minutes to log on to the internet bank and change.
 
The Israel museum in Jerusalem with the Dead Sea scrolls needs a minimum of 4 hours to visit. I would love to go back.
 
I travelled with a parish on a pilgrimage in the Holy land. Late February early March was a perfect time. Not to cold and not to hot. Depending upon where we were it was between t-shirt and spring coat weather. One convent was freezing cold as there was a problem with the heating system. Floating in the Dead Sea is recommended and it is always warm.

The desert was green with flowers all over. Almond trees had just started to blossom.

If there are queues to look at A then look at B for 10 minutes and then go back to A when the queues are shorter. It is impossible to fit everything into one trip. I would like to go back to the Galilee area during spring.

Listening to the Bible stories I know what it looks like at the places. Well, almost 2000 years later. 🤣
 
HeDa said:
It could be that your card was closed to international payments and withdrawals. I close and open my card to different regions in the world when I travel. Takes about 2 minutes to log on to the internet bank and change.
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I think you meant to address this comment to @Tis_Bearself. I’m the one who had no trouble with his card.
 
HeDa said:
The Israel museum in Jerusalem with the Dead Sea scrolls needs a minimum of 4 hours to visit. I would love to go back.
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And the scale model of first-century Jerusalem is fascinating. I think I spent longer looking at that from every angle, in the hot summer sun, than in the air-conditioned Shrine of the Book.
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Thanks, but I travel internationally at least once per year and sometimes more, and like I said one card is from the US Department of State who specialize in providing international use cards. So that’s not the problem.
 
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