Day 77 - Warning: Don't use Budget in Israel!

We drove to see the Baha'i Gardens in Haifa, they were bigger than those in Acre and went up the edge of a large hill, there is a large gold dome in the middle. From the top we had a great view of the gardens and also of Haifa.

From there we drove on to Ceaseara to see the Roman ruins, this time we just viewed from outside  as there were bus loads of tourists and we felt we had seen our fair share of Roman ruins, although the aqueduct right on the beach was something we hadn't seen before.

We stopped for lunch in a beachside town on the Mediterranean and went for a walk on a lovely beach with fine sand, no rocks and very clean water.

After dropping off our luggage at our Airbnb in Tel Aviv we drove to the Budget office to drop off our rental car. Although we have hired lots of cars from Budget and always had good experiences, the Israeli experience made them seem like a different company.

On the pickup in Jerusalem they were disorganized, unprofessional and uncaring. The car we were given was very dirty with rubbish inside, and this was ingrained dirt, it wasn't just not cleaned from the previous rental. The outside had marks and scratches, there were dings in the panels, a hub cap was missing, as was a tail light. Although it had Budget stickers on it, it looked like "Rent A Bomb". Only some of these were marked on the paperwork and as M was taking photos and recording them the Budget guy was telling him not to worry about it. So, of course as soon as we pulled in to drop the car off they started on all the damage and wouldn't believe it wasn't there before! Luckily we had time and date stamped photos. We had also filled up the car about 20kms before we dropped it off but after that small distance the tank wasn't showing full any more.We ended up taking the car back out again to fill it up ... we were happy to see the end of that car and of Budget Israel as well.

The promenade and beach at Tel Aviv is very wide, and quite modern looking, and the beach has very fine white sand so we enjoyed a drink on the beach as the sun was setting (whilst trying not to choke at the prices) before heading home. Previous to Israel we had found Switzerland the most expensive country we have visited, but Israel is our new winner.