After a little initial confusion at the King David hotel because there were so many people gathered to go on several different tours, this tour turned out to be one of the best I've ever taken. Our guide, whose name I can only remember as starting with an S, was very informative, talkative, friendly and funny. After a not too long picturesque drive in a very comfortable van to Bethlehem, we first visited a religious archaeological site then moved on to a number of churches including a Greek Orthodox one where everybody but me queued up for about an hour to go into a hole underneath the altar to see I don't know what. I amused myself by sneaking upstairs to take some snaps of an interesting courtyard and otherwise just sat and watched all the interesting people waiting to get into that hole. We then moved on to a souvenir shop where they inexplicably ladened us with free sandwiches, tea, coffee, baklava and trinkets. Later we tracked out to the River Jordan and Jericho. Good times.