Only One Day to See Jerusalem?
Don't worry - put on your walking shoes and let's start our favorite Jerusalem tours!
Our best one-day Jerusalem tours: After years of backtracking all over town, we've fine tuned our one-day tours to hit all the hot spots in a few hours without burning you out.
You want to enjoy the experience, not spend the day sprinting from here to there!
Fortunately, the top three Jerusalem holy sites are all in the Old City in walking range of each other.
They are:
In the Morning
Start your day by visiting these three sites and exploring the Old City. Depending how in-depth you want your visit to be, you can hit all three in one morning and still have an afternoon left over for something else (like souvenir shopping!); or you can spend your entire day studying just one of them.You could try a do-it-yourself tour and walk through the Old City on your own but, without a tour guide most Jerusalem tours may not make much sense. If you want to understand the importance of what you’re looking at, you’ll need a guide of some kind to walk you through. Plus, to get a taste of these sites in context, it's worth exploring the Old City as a whole.
Jerusalem mp3: Our Favorite Jerusalem Tours
Our favorite way of touring the Old City (and the cheapest, too) is to download the relevant tours from the Jerusalem Municipality website. They offer free mp3 downloads for about a dozen Jerusalem tours. The audio quality of the files is very good and the information is provided by Yad Ben Zvi, the most prestigious Israeli institution for Jerusalem studies. The tours will take your through the Armenian quarter, the Jewish Quarter, the Western Wall, near the Dome of the Rock, along the Via Dolorosa, to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Room of the Last Supper, Dormition Abbey and King David’s Tomb. We've figured out how best to combine the tours into a one-day walking tour that covers most of the Old City in a time-efficient circuit. Follow our detailed instructions
for downloading and using the Jerusalem mp3 tours.
Otherwise, you’ll finish one tour at the opposite end of the city from where you want to start the next one.
If you want a live tour guide (one you can ask questions to!), so you can get the most you possibly can out of your sightseeing, we suggest you contact one of our recommended tour guides for the best possible Jerusalem tours. They'll tailor an itinerary just for you, based on your and your family's specific interests.If you don’t mind organized groups, you could also join one of the Four Quarters tours by Zion Walking Tours for an overview of the Old City. Tours in English leave at 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. and take about three hours. Tours in French, Spanish, German and Hebrew can be arranged if you call up two days ahead and have a party of at least 4 people. The Zion Walking Tours office is just inside Jaffa Gate, opposite the Tower of David museum. Tel: 050-5305552. Cost: $25. When you’re done with the tour of the Old City, you may want to browse through the shuk near Jaffa Gate, or make your way back to the Jewish Quarter plaza for lunch or to the Cardo for some souvenir shopping.
In the Afternoon
If you’re up to another excursion in the afternoon, choose one or two from our list of
10 best Old City sites
or head outside the walls for a taste of what modern Jerusalem has to offer.One activity we highly recommend as part of a one-day visit is the Route 99 Egged City Tour Bus.
Especially after walking all morning, it's nice to relax in one of our only double-decker buses while enjoying a 2-hour Jerusalem tour. The bus takes you all the way around the city with a running commentary by a digital tour guide - put on your earphones and choose one of eight languages (Hebrew, Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, Italian and Spanish). Pick the air-conditioned downstairs for comfort or the open-top, breezy upstairs for better views and photography, since there are no windows.
Around the Old City you can pick up Route 99 at the marked bus stops at Dung Gate, Jaffa Gate, Lions Gate and the City of David.
The bus runs every 2 to 2.5 hours, from 11:00 to 18:00, Sunday through Thursday. Buy your ticket on the bus or at the Central Bus Station. For the 2-hour Jerusalem tour, get the Panoramic tour ticket. 45 NIS adults; 36 NIS children. To be able to get on and off the bus at any of 29 tourism sites as often as you like, get the Day Pass. 65 NIS adults; 56 NIS children. There is also a two-day pass.
These are my favorite recommendations if you've only got one day to spend in Jerusalem. But what about your's?What if you only had one day here?
Your Favorite One-Day Jerusalem Tours
What Would You Do?
If you had only one day in Jerusalem, what would you do? Please share your favorite one-day Jerusalem tours with us!
We look forward to reading your suggestions and we're sure other visitors to this site will benefit from your experiences.
So, tell us ... only one day in Jerusalem ... what would you do?
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