Our family of seven went on a pilgrimage to Israel for ten days. We chose to stay in Jerusalem because we wanted to be close to the Holy Sepulchre, but we also wanted to see and pray at the Holy Sites in Palestine.
We chose Michael as our guide simply based on the description of his tours and the reviews we found online. We could not have made a better choice, especially given how concerned we were to travel to Palestine.
We loved our day with Michael so much that we immediately booked him for a second one, which allowed us to see everything we wanted to see and also to spend a lot more time at each site.
Michael was very welcoming to us and a lot more helpful than all the other guides we had during our trip. He always gave us options regarding transport and itinerary, helping us to see the advantages and disadvantages of each. We never felt under any pressure to do anything, we were not dragged to any of those tourist trap souvenir shops, and we were allowed to rethink and reorganise our itinerary even on the day itself just as we wanted.
As a guide, Michael is VERY knowledgeable, but he never bored us with too much unwanted information – he knew perfectly well how to dose his presentations based on the level of interest we showed. He knows everyone in Palestine and everyone seems to know him, which was great, because it helped us skip a few queues and get to spend some extra time in a few places.
He also helped us organise our trip outside Palestine, by suggesting lesser-known sites to visit in Jerusalem and Galilee, and even finding contacts for us in these places. We once got stuck for a day with no transport and he somehow managed to get us a minibus from Palestine (we were in Jerusalem at the time!).
To sum up, he is extremely knowledgeable, with excellent people skills. He helped us way beyond what was his responsibility and made us feel totally safe at all times.
This was my fifth trip to Israel, so I got to know quite a number of guides along the years. Michael was by far the most enjoyable and trustworthy one I've met and we all very much look forward to getting back to the Holy Sites of Palestine again, definitely with him as our guide.
