Definitely two groups of answers here. I’m surprised no one from Group 1 has suggested stuffing her pockets with some tomatoes and a few sprigs of rosemary.

Moving on to the kind folk of Group 2. I think a wander into Central is a great idea. I was there 20 years ago and was amazed by the architecture.

Re alternate routing, I followed the suggested links and TLV-HKG-MEL still seems best – just one stop isn’t too bad on a non-standard routing, I guess.

For FF miles, as our main flying is between UK and Australia we are only linked to Kris Flyer, and I cannot see an easy way to use *A without backtracking to FRA, which add time and about $300. (El Al to BKK then Thai Air direct to MEL looked good for a moment, but has a 10 hour wait in BKK!). So do we just open a new FF account on Cathay or one of their partners (Qantas may be best) and hope they come in useful one day?