Tel Aviv Travelers Recommend

Tel Aviv is a new city, established only a century ago, so it’s a prime location for lovers of modern architecture. In fact, the White City area has such a concentration of international-style Bauhaus buildings, it’s been declared a World Heritage site. The dining is multicultural in Tel Aviv, a city that crams more sushi restaurants into its lushly treed avenues and shopping malls than most Japanese cities can boast. Of course, you’re going to want to try some down-home Jewish cooking like gefilte fish, chopped liver and the Tel Aviv specialties, humus and falafel. Tel Aviv is an ideal base for day trips to Israel’s highlights. Tour the Old City of Jerusalem and visit biblical, Byzantine, Armenian and Jewish sites in the city. Have a lighter-than-air float and wellness session in the Dead Sea, followed by a scrub in the natural minerals of the therapeutic mud. Travel through the desert to Jericho, one of the world’s oldest cities.

The Dead Sea is the second saltiest major body of water on earth, and it is this hyper-salinity, which causes swimmers to be super-buoyant within it, that makes it one of Israel’s major attractions. The Dead Sea lies 1,312 feet below sea level and is located about 98 km from Tel Aviv. It is fed by the River Jordan and has no outlets streams, causing its high salinity, which is too extreme for marine life and gives it its morbid name. So what’s there to do in such a salty calm and lifeless body of water? Well, it’s nearly impossible to sink in the Dead Sea, so a popular activity is to have your picture taken while floating on the surface of the water and reading a book. It is also a great place to give yourself a mud bath, as the Dead Sea is one of the world’s richest sources of natural salts. There are plenty of beaches to choose from.