Our Original Plan:
We were not able to get our original flights because the low fare we were chasing went up before we were able to book it. After freaking out I found flights that got us into TLV Saturday morning and departing the following Saturday morning. We booked the first night in TLV and then three nights in Jerusalem followed by three more nights in TLV.

I knew that the hotels we were staying at in TLV were on the beach but all of the weather forecasts before we left predicted highs in the mid 60's and cloudy or rain so spending any time there was not in our plan. When we arrived at our hotel the weather was very warm and sunny and as soon as my 3 y.o. saw the beach (which was very active) he wanted to go. The only problem was that we had no swim wear. Wanting to be a good dad, we set out on Sunday morning to look for bathing suits for the three of us, not so much for that day but for the return to TLV that Wednesday.

The reality:
We went to Jerusalem and walked around the old city and vicinity on our own but we realized that without a guide we would miss a lot so we procured a guide for that Monday morning. We spent the morning in the Old City and museums and learned and saw a lot. The weather forecasts were completely wrong and it was sunny and very warm while we were there and the revised forecasts were showing temperatures in the mid 80's by the end of the week for TLV. On a whim, I checked on some last minute flights to Eilat and they were remarkably reasonable. A quick check of hotels using SPG points got us Herod's Place for 7K/night (maybe the best value of points in the entire chain) so we made a division to Eilat for a 1.5 days and bought the clothes that we needed. The hotel was very accommodating to children and we had to pry my son away from the beach and pool at the end of the day. We spend the last 1.5 days in TLV going to the shuk's, Old Jaffa, a museum and back to the beach late Friday for a nice long swim in the (freezing) Mediterranean sea.

Lessons learned:
Don't ever trust the 5 day weather forecasts
A trip to Israel will be more about what you missed than what you saw
If there are beaches or pools always bring a bathing suit
We should have gone straight into Jerusalem instead of overnighting in TLV


Thanks to everyone above who helped me plan this trip. We will definitely be going back

Keba