Jordan | Holy Land

Day 1 ~ Welcome to Jordan “Ahlan Wa Sahlan”

Our representative will meet you at the arrivals gate and help you through airport formalities. Our driver will transfer you to your hotel. If time permits and you are not tired from your trip, we will take you on a welcome panoramic tour of Amman, then return you to your hotel.

Meals included: According to arrival time
Accommodation: The House Boutique Hotel or similar

Day 2 ~ Amman & Jerash

Only an hour’s drive north of Amman, through green and scenic landscape, lies Jerash, once one of the most influential Roman cities in the world. Inhabited since the Bronze Age, Jerash is today is a ruin in the sands of time, and one of the best preserved Roman cities in the Middle East. Roman architecture is grand and majestic and we will experience this while walking on the ancient stones where also trod Alexander the Great, the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, and the mathematician Nichomachas.

We will return to Amman in the afternoon to visit the Amman’s Citadel and Roman Theater, and stroll through the Old City. Jordan is today a leader in Arab politics, and its expanding cities are testimony to Jordan’s rising market economy.

In the evening, we will enjoy a meal in a wonderful local restaurant. Three charming young granddaughters run this cooking school and restaurant, using their grandmother’s recipes for delicious Arabic foods.

Meals included: Breakfast + Dinner
Accommodation: The House Boutique Hotel or similar

Day 3 ~ Cairo Sightseeing and Aswan

Following a southerly route, we will visit Mt. Nebo where Moses is supposedly buried, and the Byzantine church in Madaba.

Later in the afternoon we will drive farther south and enter Wadi Rum, one of the most spectacular natural environments in the Middle East. Huge granite, basalt and sandstone rocks rise straight out of the red sand floor, creating mysterious corridors, rock bridges leaping across ravines, and towering bulbous formations. Deep sand dunes and brilliant sunlight carpet Wadi Rum’s vast wilderness, leaving one at peace within its lonely walls.

We will explore this memorizing desert in a 4X4 pick up, and later arrive at a camp for a Bedouin dinner called Zarb. This Bedouin specialty is cooked several hours on coals in a hole in the ground. We will surprise you with its flavors! And we will surprise you too with your accommodations. We will be glamping (comfortable camping). Our Wadi Rum experience will be most memorable.

Meals included: Breakfast + Dinner
Accommodation: Sun City Camp

Day 4 ~ Petra

Hidden in a remote valley basin in the heart of southern Jordan’s Shara Mountains is one of the wonders of the world – majestic Petra. At first sight it is difficult to imagine how many humans could have existed in this harsh group of steep canyons, let alone carve monumental tombs, temples, and theaters out of its immense rock formations. In fact, it is a defendable place with a well-watered and lush interior. A principal pathway for the Arabian caravan route, the Nabateans created a city built on tariffs extracted from traders seeking a safe passage through Arabia. Romans, Byzantines and Crusaders also played a role within these mysterious canyon walls, but no more so than the Bedouin pastoralists whose ancestors remain here today.

Meals included: Breakfast
Accommodation: Old Village Resort or similar (5* hotel built into the ruins of an 18th C. Arab village)

Day 5 ~ Little Petra, Choubak castle, the Dead Sea

Like Petra, Little Petra is a Nabataean site with buildings carved into the walls of the sandstone canyons. As its name suggests, it is much smaller, consisting of three wider open areas connected by a 450-metre canyon. We will later continue on to visit the Crusader Castle, Choubak, and then drive to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening, and the entire next day, at a beautiful resort on the Dead Sea.

Here you can swim in the pool or float in the saltiest body of water in the Middle East while reading a newspaper (Seriously!) Down time for the traveler with sensory overload.

Meals included: Breakfast
Accommodation: 5* Holiday Inn Resort or similar

Day 6 ~ Being lazy by the Dead Sea

Down time is needed. Just relax, have fun, swim in the pool or lounge in the Dead Sea.

Meals included: Breakfast
Accommodation: 5* Holiday Inn Resort or similar

Day 7 ~ Massada, Qumran, Tibrias

Transfer to Allenby Bridge to cross into Israel – Meet at Allenby border, transfer to Massada, ascend by cable car to the top of the mountain, and then back to Qumran visit the caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Continue north via Jordan Valley Road to Tiberias.

Masada, King Herod’s mountain bunker, was the last stronghold of the Jewish revolt against Rome (66-73AD). From this rock pile of cliffs and ruins, you have a great view of the Dead Sea and its surrounding desert. What the Jews did up here is another fascinating story – and the entire site was only discovered in the late 19th Century.

Meals included: Breakfast
Accommodation: 2 overnights in the Royal Plaza Hotel or similar

Day 8 ~ Tel Dan, Banias Springs, Tiberias.

Banias Springs, then back to Tiberias to visit Caper Naum, Mt. of Beatitudes, Multiplication church, Tabgha.

Caesarea-Philippi was an impressive Greco-Roman city, located in the foothills of the Mt. Hermon, near the Golan Heights. We will then head back down to the Sea Of Galilee to visit many biblical sites such as the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane. It is magical to stand on the original shores of this ancient lake, still in its simplistic, untouched form,. One can imagine Jesus’s footsteps in these holiest of places.

Meals included: Breakfast
Accommodation: Royal Plaza Hotel or similar

Day 9 ~ Mt Tabor, Nazareth, Jerusalem

Mt. Tabor to visit the Transfiguration Church; to Nazareth and the Annunciation Church, and north to Haifa where we will visit Mt. Carmel, Stella Mares, Bahaai Gardens, and other sites along our route to Jerusalem.

Meals included: Breakfast
Accommodation: 4 nights in the Dan Panorama Hotel Jerusalem or similar

Day 10 ~ Bethlehem

The Nativity church, Milk grotto, Chapel of the Shepherds Field, then a return to Jerusalem. In the afternoon we will visit Ein Karem Village and its Visitation Church before returning to our hotel in Jerusalem.
John the Baptist was supposedly born in Ein Karem, leading to the establishment of many churches and monasteries, including The Church of the Visitation, formerly known as the Abbey Church of St John in the Woods.
Visiting Bethlehem in the volatile West Bank requires passing through a gate in the security barrier and through smaller checkpoints on the area’s main roads, where tourists are asked to show passports. There is cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian tourism ministries, which has greatly eased this passage. By this time you will have a true understanding of exactly what is the West Bank, where are the Jewish settlements; who are the Palestinians and how do they function without a land and a passport.

Meals included: Breakfast
Accommodation: Dan Panorama Hotel Jerusalem or similar

Day 11 ~ Jerusalem

The Jewish connection: Israel Museum and the Shrine of the Book with its Dead Sea Scrolls. Yad Vashem Museum (Holocaust Museum), Jaffa, the Tower of David.
Even the strongest atheist is moved by Jerusalem’s depth of its religiosity, its architectural integrity, the passion of history that is entombed in every yellow stone this one-square mile walled municipality is made of. This is the true city of cultural diversity: Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Christians, and Arabs each contribute to the magnificence of Jerusalem.

Meals included: Breakfast
Accommodation: Dan Panorama Hotel Jerusalem or similar

Day 12 ~ Mount of Olives, Old City, Jerusalem

Our Jerusalem journey will begin from the Mt. of Olives where our guide will lead us on a traditional Palm Sunday route to the church known as Dominus Flevit (“The Lord weeps”), then downhill to Gethsemane, Mt. Zion, and Solomon’s Pools. We will wander through the labyrinth of narrow streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, visiting the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque (so beautiful!), the Wailing Wall, Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and more. It is a wonder to actually stand on or inside of a place you have heard about your entire life.

Meals included: Breakfast
Accommodation: Dan Panorama Hotel Jerusalem or similar

Day 13 ~ Jerusalem, Amman

Transfer to Allenby Bridge, and cross into Jordan. Those of you who are not too tired are welcome to a farewell city tour before returning to your hotel to pack. Farewell dinner, overnight in Amman.

Meals included: Breakfast + Dinner
Accommodation: The House Boutique Hotel or similar

Day 14 ~ Departure

Transfer to the airport for departure with assistance.

Meals included: Breakfast