48 hours in Jerusalem? Then check out this itinerary combining history and modern culture, by Reuters.

The Washington Post take a trip to Israel, the culinary capital of Israel, and are blown away by the range of amazing food on offer.

Don’t ever travel business-class to Israel, for a start. Yes, you’ll feel like the Big I Am. But you just won’t get the sheer oomph! of what Israel is. The crop-topped teenage girls blowing bubblegum next to prayer-shawled Haredim. The soft-hearted gangsters holding the toilet doors open for the cold-eyed grandmas. The Russian blondes and the Mizrahi brunettes. All of them — gorgeously — Israel…

The Tel Aviv suburb of Holon has recently become home to Israel’s newest design museum. Conceived by renowned designer Ron Arad, the museum has become an iconic spectacle, with fascinating displays, in an unlikely setting.

The UK’s News of the World visit Tel Aviv and ‘Tel Aviv it Like It Is’ – a great write-up on the city we love so much!

NOT so long ago, the ancient port city of Jaffa at the southern edge of modern Tel Aviv was considered a dilapidated backwater, particularly the areas outside the preserved old city. Some Jewish Israelis avoided the area altogether — except for pilgrimages to eat some of Israel’s best hummus at Abu Hassan (1 Dolphin Street; 972-3-682-0387).

FEW cities can be more confounding than Jerusalem — Israel’s ancient, conflict-ridden, ponderously pious capital. A cultural, political and spiritual crashing point since biblical times, this holiest of holy cities is the crossroads for the world’s three great monotheistic religions — each of them clamoring for scarce real estate and the theological upper hand.

Does anyone have Bono’s phone number? If so, could they give it to Merav Ayalon because she’d like a word. Ayalon leans back, pats her dog and draws languidly on a cigarette. I’m sitting with her near the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, 400m below sea level.

Cicadas chirrup and a lustrous full Moon illuminates the cacti and baobab trees in the middle distance, making them seem like old men frozen in time. Even at 10pm on a November evening, it’s warm enough to sit out in shorts and a T-shirt. My drinking companion is wistful, and so am I, but for different reasons.

Perhaps nowhere else on the globe does there exist a greater discrepancy between perception and reality than Israel. The press portrays the country as a savage land racked by war and terrorism, and many outsiders have the impression that Israelis live their daily lives cowering amongst endless cycles of violence. The reality, though, is a country of 7.4 million people whose stock market and economy are humming along quite nicely (at least in contrast to the rest of the globe) and whose citizens revel in their chic Mediterranean lifestyle.