Our granddaughter’s trip to Israel with us had to be perfect as the gift for her Bat Mitzvah. We wanted to show her Israel, but most of all to experience Israel so she would want to come back to Israel to see and do more. I found Alex Stein on TripAdvisor looking for a private guide who got excellent reviews for Israel tours with children and teens.
Alex’s contact details are telephone: 00972-545-216-237, email: alex.stein@talk21.com
Alex is amazing at what he does and he does everything with you and for you. With our granddaughter’s input, we created a perfect itinerary for the three of us with eight overnights in Israel, 5 in Jerusalem, 2 in the Galilee and 1 in Tel Aviv. It is important to give your teen options and let the teen pick from choices of places to see, things to do, and places to eat.
You need reservations and most places require prior deposits or payment. Alex took care of everything and advanced many deposits himself. He got tickets that allowed us to skip lines and he knew shortcuts to how to get the best for our dollars. He did his own investigation of everything so our time ran smoothly, and adapted plans along the way to best serve our granddaughter.
In Jerusalem, we saw the Western Wall and did the Western Wall tunnel tour. We saw the City of David and ate lunch at the best pizza place in the Machane Yehuda market, Alex’s favorite pizza place there. We went to Masada (up the cable car) and swam in the Dead Sea. Alex climbed the entire waterfalls of Ein Gedi with our granddaughter, while we grandparents waited for them after seeing the beginning waterfalls. He made sure our granddaughter saw and did everything she wanted to.
Our granddaughter choose to do “A Dig for a Day,” at Beit Guvrin, an archeological dig and caving. We grandparents loved it too, more than we thought we would, and when our granddaughter went crawling in caves, Alex went with her, and we saw an excavated cave palace with real stairs.
Our granddaughter rode in an ATV with her grandfather in the Judaea Hills. She rappelled off a high hill in Jerusalem, and learned how to rappell and climb with Yaachov of Challenge Tours, which not only did Alex arrange and coordinate, but assisted by rappelling first to show our granddaughter it was fun and easier than she thought. She did five rappelling rounds and then twice climbed, this easy way to introduce rappelling for the first time with a teen.
We planted trees in JNF forest. Most significantly, for our family, with Holocaust history, Alex suggested, arranged and coordinated a personalized Holocaust tour with an outstanding Yad Vashem guide, Mindy, who prepared and executed the sections of Yad Vashem that highlighted our family history and intentionally avoided the gruesome aspects of the museum, a specialized Bat Mitzvah tour appropriate for a young teen.
In the Galilee, among other things, our granddaughter went on a ropes course at Kibbutz Sasa, learned to shoot a (paintball) gun at Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar, and went horseback riding at Ramot Ranch in the Golan Heights. We have a magnificent picture of grandfather and granddaughter on the top of a hill holding hands across horses as the sun set on the Sea of Galilee behind them.
On our way to Tel Aviv, we did highlights sightseeing of Rosh Hanikra taking the cable car to the grottos, and spent most of our time at Caesarea at the brand new visitors’ center and movie, concentrating again on exploring what interested our granddaughter. We ended our trip in Tel Aviv. We toured the iconic bullet factory, at the Ayalon Institute. Alex took our granddaughter to a water park he visited when he was our granddaughter’s age, Yanit 2000 Water Park, and he went on the slides with her. We ended our time in Tel Aviv with an amazing private graffiti tour and workshop with Grafutiyul( great guide, how he said for us to remember his Hebrew name “I am shy.”). The tour covered all the best special neighborhood graffiti, with learning all about types and styles and messages. Then we graffiti painted walls of the area near the workshop and our granddaughter did two graffiti projects of her own to take home.
Our trip was spectacular and so is Alex Stein. Alex worked with us to make all this and much more happen, did bookings (even hotel), assisting in research and development of a teen Israel itinerary, doing all the legwork and preparation, prepaying admissions to facilitate quicker entries,and then anticipating our granddaughter’s needs and desires and our needs as we went along.
As we went through Israel, Alex was perfect in executing and flexibly adapting the itinerary for us to see and do the perfect amount in Israel for our granddaughter to say at the end of our time with Alex that the trip exceeded HER expectations. That is how good a guide he is. We, as Grandparents, could not be happier with Alex’s services that go above and beyond to make your Israel family trip perfect for you.
As a grandparent, if you find the right guide, your trip becomes the dream you want it to be for your grandchild. If you intend to take your grandchild to Israel, this blog post gives you the guide and ideas that worked with our grandchild with
Joy,
Mema
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