Planning a family trip to Israel? TripNest turns it into its own app: 10 narrated story podcasts about Israel for the drive, games and a quiz for the kids, an audio phrasebook, and the day-by-day plan and map the whole family shares.
Four quarters, eight gates, one very old city
Jerusalem's Old City fits inside walls you can walk right around in about an hour. Step through one gate and you hear church bells, step through another and you smell cardamom coffee and fresh bread. We'll follow the stone lanes and find out why this small place matters to so many people.
Masada at sunrise, then a swim you can't sink in
Imagine a palace built on top of a cliff in the middle of a desert, with storerooms, a bathhouse and pools cut into the rock. Then imagine floating on water so salty you can't push yourself under. Both are waiting in the same corner of Israel.
Jaffa's alleys and Tel Aviv's white buildings
Jaffa has been sending boats out to sea for thousands of years. Just up the beach, Tel Aviv is barely a hundred years old and full of curved white buildings with shady balconies. We'll walk from the oldest stones to the newest ones in a single afternoon.
Caesarea's theatre, aqueduct and vanished port
Two thousand years ago engineers poured a harbour into the open sea here, using a concrete that hardens underwater. Much of it has slipped beneath the waves, but the theatre still has seats you can sit in and an aqueduct still crosses the sand. Bring your best echo-testing voice.
Makhtesh Ramon and the quiet Negev
From the edge you look down into a vast bowl of coloured rock about 40 kilometres long. No volcano made it and no meteorite hit it - just water, wind and a huge amount of time. At night the sky above it is one of the darkest and starriest in the country.
Eilat, where the sand meets coral
Drive south through bare brown hills and the road suddenly ends at a blue sea full of coral. Clownfish, parrotfish and sea turtles live just offshore. We'll learn how to look at a reef without touching it, and why that matters.
How Hebrew came back into everyday life
For a long time Hebrew was mostly read and prayed in rather than chatted in. Then people began using it for ordinary things - shopping, arguing, naming new inventions. Find out how you say 'ice cream' in a language older than almost any other you'll hear on this trip.
Spices, pita and far too many salads
Markets here are loud, crowded and brilliant for anyone who likes tasting things. Chickpeas turn into hummus and falafel, sesame turns into tahini, and somehow the table fills with little dishes before the main food even arrives. We'll give you the words to order your own lunch.
The Hula Valley and the great migration
Twice a year, enormous flocks of birds use Israel as a bridge between Europe and Africa. Cranes, storks and pelicans stop to rest and refuel in the north. Learn how to spot them and why a wagon ride at dawn is worth getting out of bed for.
Akko's hidden halls and Haifa's garden stairs
Under the old port town of Akko there are Crusader halls and a tunnel you can actually walk through. Along the coast in Haifa, a hillside is shaped into nineteen green garden terraces. Two very different ways to use a hill, both worth seeing.
The shore of the Dead Sea / The beach at Eilat / The Hula Valley
Top to bottom / Right to left / Left to right
A meteorite / A volcano / Millions of years of water and weather wearing the rock away
The Israel podcast has 10 narrated story episodes for the car or the plane: Inside the Old City Walls, The Cliff Fortress and the Floating Sea, Old Port, New City, A Roman Harbour by the Sea, The Crater That Isn't a Crater, Reef at the End of the Desert, The Language That Woke Up, A Morning in the Shuk, Half a Billion Birds Overhead and Tunnels, Terraces and the Sea.
"תודה רבה", said to-DA ra-BA. It's one of the phrases in the Israel audio phrasebook, recorded so the kids can hear it before they try it.
100 (Police), 101 (Ambulance (Magen David Adom)) and 102 (Fire). TripNest puts it in your trip's contacts page next to your own contacts.
Every trip starts free: the day-by-day plan, map and contacts. Premium adds the Israel podcasts, kids' games and the audio phrasebook for $24, once per trip - no subscription.
No. Your trip is one link that opens on everyone's phone, grandparents included, without an account. You can add it to your home screen so it works offline once you land.