There were no proper roads for carriages until the 1867 when the Kaiser of Austria, Franz Joseph, came to visit the Jerusalem’s holy sites. Travelers from the coast like the returning Jews who disembarked at the harbor of Jaffa, made their way on foot or by donkey to Jerusalem. The journey took two days, with an overnight stop at an …

Today one can hardly think of Jerusalem without it’s walls, but it must be remembered that Jerusalem was without walls, excepting some ruins, from the days of the Crusaders, 400 years before Suleiman, the sultan who ordered the walls to be built at the beginning of the 16th century. Suleiman, known as “Suleiman the Great” also Suleiman the law giver, …

The completion of the walls around Jerusalem in 1538 and the 8 gates was cause for great celebration for the inhabitants of the city, who had lived here in great fear of murder and plunder by Bedouin from the nearby Judean Desert. For the first time, since the Crusaders, in the 12th century, Jerusalem’s inhabitants had a wall to protect …

Israel is a tiny country but surprisingly it has many diverse geographic regions, from the mountains in the north to the deserts in the south. As far as wine regions go, there are officially 5 regions but they were determined in the 1960s before the wine industry really developed. They don’t encompass today’s reality on the ground.  fferent regions mean different …

As I mentioned in my first article about wine making in Israel, the industry ended abruptly with the Arab Conquest in the 7th century. In the mid-1800s, while still under Ottoman Muslim rule, a few Jewish families started producing and selling wine for religious uses. However, the real story of Israeli wine production starts with a man named Baron Edmund …

Israel is no doubt one of the planet’s top must do list destinations for travelers from all over the world. Birthplace of the world’s major religions and at the same time, it is also a diverse, vibrant, trendy, and modern country with great night life that would be a top tourist destination even without its ancient biblical roots. And yes even presently Israel …