Hello again!

At this point we have already ridden the Western Galilee, the Upper Galilee, the Golan Heights and the Lower Galilee. I will leave the Tel Aviv and Central area to the end, since they are not really riding, but rather commuting - in most cases you will be riding in cities or main roads.

So today we will ride the Jerusalem heights and Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is 66 Km from Tel Aviv if you take the main highway to get there. However, if you do that, you miss beautiful places and sceneries that you wouldn't want to miss as a riding tourist. So, we will extend our trip to a ride of 98 Km with stops on our way through interesting places, which are worth the visit, travelling through beautiful and twisty roads.

If you have been following this series of articles about riding in Israel, you have probably seen our first 3 articles about the Western Galilee, the Upper Galilee and the Golan Heights.

This will be our last post covering the North of Israel, after which we will go South to the center of Israel and to its South. This post will cover the Lower Galilee.

There is a lot to see in the Lower Galilee, so this could be an itinerary for 1, 2 or 3 days depending on the number of points you decide to visit, and the time spent at each one of these points. The bright point is that most of the places to visit (except the last two or three in this article) are remarkably close to each other, so you won't be spending too much time travelling and you can sleep every night at the same hotel. In my opinion, the optimal tour would be divided into two days, one for Tiberias and the Northwest of the Kinneret Lake, and the second day for the Southwest of the lake, South of the lake, and Nazareth. This is the way in which I will compose this article.

Just press "Read More" to continue.

Since the beginning of this series, we have been exploring the North of Israel. We began with the Western Galilee and continued with Upper Galilee. We have two more items in the North before we continue to the Central Israel and later to the South.

As said above, today we leave for a moment the Galilee, in order to visit the Golan Heights.

In our overview of riding in Israel, and after we have surveyed the Western Galilee in our last article, we will now continue riding the North of the country, this time at the region called the Upper Galilee.

Above is a map of the North of Israel (from Wikipedia), including part of the Upper Galilee. It is incomplete, though, missing a small northern region called "The Galilee Finger", a narrow piece of land that points North, incrusted in Lebanon, and includes the towns of Kiryat Shemona and Metula.

Today we are beginning a new series of posts in this blog, named "Riding Israel". During the next months I will be posting now and then about different areas of Israel that are worth riding, talking about specific places, specific roads, and itineraries.

We will begin by describing a little of the Western Galilee district, in the north of the country.

Note: picture galleries will be displayed along the article - you can click on the pictures to see them at full size.

It's been already 4 years since our last long motorcycle tour, in Slovenia and Croatia, in 2018. Since then we had some small adventures to Cyprus and to the BMW Days in Garmisch, and I had my accident and the following purchase of a new motorcycle in Germany and a week bringing it to Israel, but nothing major, all our trips were from long 4-day weekends to one week.

During all this time, we have been planning and expecting that COVID would let us go out and have some motorcycle fun.

Scotland?

Our first plans were regarding Scotland. We wanted to spend 2 weeks there, do the NC500 and the highlands. We planned the whole trip up to the details of in which hotel we should sleep. But then we fell into problems: first, we couldn't rent the bikes that we wanted, and even if we compromised on that, renting a 650cc there costs nearly 2000 Euro per week. Renting in London would add another 4 days to the trip which we did not have. So, we decided to go to another location and leave Scotland to the future, whenever either the rental of motorcycles gets cheaper, or whenever we decide to do it by car.

At this point, our doubt became Portugal or Switzerland. I had draft itineraries for both, and at the end we decided for Portugal.

​INTRODUCTION

It was already 10 years since last time that my wife and me went into a vacation alone. Not that we tried very much, travelling with friends is always very good. We tried as well at this time to get some friends or family, but all the stars were directed to having us travelling by ourselves.

Trying to decide where to go to, we bumped into some cheap air tickets with Ryanair to Athens. Since I brought my motorcycle from Germany to Israel in January 2020 through the North Peloponnese, I wanted to show this piece of heaven to my wife Lily. So, we took the opportunity, and on December 24th we were on our way to Athens, for a 3-day trip in which we would cover some of the beautiful parts of north and south of the Peloponnese.

I cover here some aspects of the trip, and show a little of what we saw. All days are shown in the picture galleries, you can click on the first people to see it in a large size and then scroll through the pictures.

Well, COVID19 is still around, and making unsure any plans to do long trips abroad. So, we keep planning short trips, to places where we are sure that the situation won't change regarding Israeli ruling in the short time.

This time it was Aqaba, in Jordan.

This post will be a little different than others in this blog.

Usually I tell trip stories, day by day, to bring the feeling of the development of the trip. But this was a different year. And just as the year, this was a different trip. This time we postponed the experience of a motorcycle trip somewhere else, and exchanged it for a long weekend in Belgrade, one of the only destinations open to Israelis at these pandemic times, and for which Israel did not require a 14-day isolation upon return.

Our decision to go to Belgrade was spontaneous, nearly 1 week before the trip, when we saw a good deal to that destination. We consulted our friends Louiza and Shmil, and they decided to come with us.

I have gone through a difficult period in the last two months, which have happily finished now with my new adventure.

On the last November 16th (2019), after a great 3-day long weekend in Eilat, while coming home, actually while arriving home (we were two blocks from home), we were involved in a traffic accident that left my motorcycle unusable. A lady, who for her reasons (distraction, or just not being concerned about respecting the law) decided to do a left turn when the traffic light for her was red and green for me, left me with no option but to hit her in the back right side of the car.

The whole front of the motorcycle had been destroyed, the fix would be so expensive for the insurance that my options were to sell the broken motorcycle to a workshop for parts and get the remaining from the insurance, or to have it categorized as Total Loss.

​So, in any case, for me, Sapphira was dead.

As usual with these situations, the story develops to a new adventure, that I describe with words and pictures in the continuation of this post.