Why on earth do you want to go to Israel at the moment? Isn“t it very dangerous ? That was the most heard question/statement we got when we told people we were going to visit Israel for 12 days.
Well we usually go when others are not going. Chris was already several times in Israel, while Esther was not. The last time he went was before Covid and the Gaza war in 2020. You can read his experience here and here
The world has changed quite a bit since then. Traveling freely becomes harder and harder
Nevertheless, we don‘t let that stop us from exploring the world. Despite governments that come and go and we may not always agree with, Israel is such a historically important country with such significant and revered places that it should be on any bucket list at least once in a life time to visit.
Here where so much history was shaped, where the area changed hands and rulers so many times over thousands of years, we wanted to see, feel and experience the significance of those places here.
We arrived on Sunday December 28, 2025 in Tel Aviv. It is a bit of a drag to check in in a seperate corner of Munich Airport, the Terminal 1F, as security is extra tight for Israel flights. No one wants another terror attack after Munich 1972. Lufthansa passengers get bussed then from terminal 1F to terminal 2 and then wait in a closed off area.
You can leave it to get to the lounge, but then you have to pass through a another security creening again.
After an uneventful 3 hr flight Esther was expecting the immigration to be very tedious with lots of questions asked by the Israeli border control.
The opposite was true, we breezed through immigration and customs in 10 minutes. Rental car, drive to our boutique hotel, no problem and we were settled in an hour and a half later. Easy first day and we were looking forward to exploring Tel Aviv in the morning.
We were awakened by thunderstorms and pouring rain. And we mean pouring. Still we braced the weather and drove to down town Tel Aviv to explore the city on foot. First investment here – an umbrella. As the rain was coming nearly from sideways with the gusty winds, we were quite soaked and decided to seek refuge in one of the plentiful street cafes. Even the Israelis took videos of the several dowpours interrupted by short spells of rainless moments. Nobody was accustomed to so much water coming down in such a short period of time. Great start of our vacation…
Finally after lunch it stopped raining for good. We still had a lot of things we wanted to see. The old Port area on the seaside was beautiful to stroll on, even though we got wet by the thundering waves causing ocean spray to fly high. Finally the sun came out and bathed everything in golden light.
Tel Aviv is a strange mixture between old and run down houses, beautifully renovated Bauhaus buildings (an Unesco world heritage site) and many new constructions popping up everywhere.
We strolled along Rothchild Boulevard, where a good number of Bauhaus buildings are located. Rothchild boulevard ends at one of the many places in Tel Aviv where we saw countless cards, stickers and memorabilia for the victimes of this senseless Gaza war. Hostages, fallen soldiers, and soldiers still serving, male and female, are being commemorated everywhere here. On each square, in each lift, on each street corner. What surprised us is that we hardly saw anyone with a gun on the streets. We had expected to see many.
Exploring a city on foot is still the best way to get the feel for it. In every parc and on the beach we saw fitness equipment and people are really using it. We strolled randomly through different quarters, sat down on street cafes for a cup of coffee, which are plentiful and well frequented. Before we made our way to the southern part of the city, Jaffa, we ambled through Carmel market.
Carmel market is the largest of the markets in Tel Aviv and offers everything from meat, fresh vegetables, sweets, household wares, clothes and jewellery. Different scents waft through the narrow streets and making us hungry. We decided to go to Jaffa for dinner as there is a large selection of more middle eastern food we wanted to try. While Tel Aviv is majority Jewish, we hardly saw any ultra orthodox. Jaffa used to be Muslim and has a different feel to it. More and more parts of Jaffa get incorporated into Tel Aviv and it is being gentrified fast.
We had a lovely and delicious dinner with local specialties and fresh lemonade. We decided to come back the next day to Jaffa and explore that part of the town on our second day here. Tired but in good spirits we arrived back at our little hotel and reflected on day 1. There was not a single situation where Esther felt in danger, even though it is strange to think that Gaza is a mere 50 kms away from where we were.