First trip to Israel!

taranaki, send me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll give you a bunch of ideas.

A few years ago I devised an itinerary for two English railway enthusiasts who tour the world looking for things of railway interest.

Do you like old (disused) stations? We have lots of those.

And train travel in Israel is inexpensive. The ride to Jerusalem is beautiful. Very scenic, rather slow and infrequent, and the Jerusalem station is out in the wilds, but for railway enthusiasts it's a must. And there is a very nice railway museum in Haifa.

You can see which area of the country are served by railways on the Israel Railway web site:
http://www.rail.co.il/EN/Pages/HomePage.aspx
A train from Tel-Aviv to Haifa (about an hour) costs only 30.50 NIS, about $7.50.
The old Turkish railway station in Jaffa has recently been renovated and reopened to the public, with a tourist information office in the station itself and restaurants and boutiques in the surrounding warehouses:
http://www.hatachana.co.il/Home

If you are looking for an experienced Palestinian Tour Guide, Khalid is your guide. He is an English speaking tour guide who specializes in Alternative tours in and around Bethlehem, including Hebron, Ramallah, Jericho and the Dead Sea.
He is very knowledgeable of Palestinian history, and often provided interesting or funny anecdotes as well. He was quite intuitive with respect to our interests and designed around that. he is very friendly and has great English skills. he is always on time and has very good air-conditioning.
He is highly recommended by the many that have experienced a tour with him. we booked him for 10 hours every day and paid a very reasonable price when we needed him to work for longer he did no worries. I would definitely recommend him as a driver in Palestine, West Bank and Israel and will definitely be using him again when we are next go there. he is easy to contact via Email
hiddentreasuretours@gmail.com
or on (972) 5222 44225 or (972) 597458388 his website http://nativitytour.blogspot.com/