Our Exploration of the Four Israeli Seas

For such a small country, Israel sure has a lot of seas. Two of them are technically lakes, as they are completely surrounded by land, but they are both called "sea" for some reason -- Dead Sea probably because something with water as salty as that has to be a sea, and Lake Kinneret is also called Sea of Galilee for whatever reason -- and who am I to argue with time-honored misconceptions? The bottom line, you can swim in all four of them, and we certainly did our best -- shortage of time and bad weather notwithstanding...

Mediterranean Sea

We spent just a couple of hours in Jaffo -- no time for a change and swim. We just waded into the Mediterranean. The water was on the cool side, but not too cold. Amazingly enough, and very unlike the standard operating procedure, the kids' clothes stayed dry...

Lake Kinneret, aka Sea of Galilee

We spent an afternoon around Lake Kinneret, starting with a lunch on the waterfront in Tveria, then taking a quick dip at a public beach somewhere down the shore (with Tveria in the background), and then driving around and up to the Golan Heights. It was hot and hazy.

Dead Sea

Unbelievable as it sounds, it was raining on the Dead Sea. We hardly managed to find a 40-minute break in the rain and take a quick dip -- or rather float...

Red Sea

We spent one perfect day on the Coral Reserve beach in Eilat (left). Then there was a complete day of rain, so we couldn't ride the camels (they were distressed -- and so were we). On the last day, we did some more swimming and then Alex and David went parasailing (most likely, it is somebody else parasailing in the picure on the right, but they did it just the same).

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