Planning a family Pessah trip
By IAN COOPER

An innovative book on traveling in Israel with the whole family is due to hit stores in the coming week. The book, Fun Family Outings (Tiyulei Mishpaha Bekef), is written in Hebrew by avid traveler and amateur botanist Shimon Bigelman and published by Keter. Inside are 45 separate trips with instructions from the minute one enters the car until arrival back home.

The most interesting fact about the book is that it incorporates games to be played in the car with children on the way to and from the sites.

The games featured in the book were supplied by Tamar Talshier-Lipshitz, an expert on educational games for children who teaches student teachers at Seminar Hakibbutzim. She met Bigelman through her work as a writer for the magazine Parents and Children (in Hebrew), in which she reviews games.

"He travels a lot and I play a lot," she says, "so we decided to make a marriage." Talshir-Lipshitz, who has written 10 books on the subject, claims that she was inspired to work in the field from her childhood in Kibbutz Ma'aleh Hahamisha. "We were always playing games when I was a girl and I realized that you could learn through the games," she says.

In addition to games for the car, the book, which is organized by region, also offers games to play at the attraction, other sites of interest in the area, background on the site, clear and concise maps for the trip, points of interest along the way and large color pictures, taken mainly by Dor Horowitz.

The book is user-friendly. Besides listing all the available places to eat and get water on the way, it also gives essential planning information such as how long the trip will take, how tough it is, what ages it is suitable for, what transportation is needed, recommended season to travel and any security notes. In addition, the shape of the book allows it to fit neatly in your car's glove compartment.

BIGELMAN has written two previous books in Hebrew and has another two on the way. Jerusalem's Gardens, which includes photographs by Neil Folberg, came out 12 years ago and was dedicated to the "phenomenon of Jerusalem from a garden point of view," says Bigelman. Unfortunately the book is now out of print.

His second book is Home Gardening, which he describes as a friendly, step-by-step guide for amateur gardeners. It was published by Keter four years ago and has sold 22,000 copies to date. One of his upcoming books deals with balcony and rooftop gardening but the other is a secret. Bigelman traces his interest in gardening back to a trip to Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver in 1978. At the park, which is situated in a former quarry, he witnessed gardeners reviewing every inch of the perfectly maintained area. When he returned to Israel he began reading and researching the subject, and began to write about it some 15 years ago. "Now I mainly plant small gardens. I also edit a small magazine called Green Garden [in Hebrew]," he says.

"I used to travel a lot before the army with friends and with the Scouts," he says. Despite studying behavioral science at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, he still found time to hike the country with friends every other weekend. "This book is a collection of some of the tours that we did." Bigelman's favorite trip in the book is a hike in Nahal Tzipori.

"It's very easy going, there is a beautiful view and the landscape is comfortable and clean. With spring on the way, if you go at the right time it will be green and full of flowers with orchards all around."

For those in other parts of the country he recommends two one-day trips to the Twins Cave in the Judean Mountains and Ein Avdat in the Negev.

WITH PESSAH approaching, Bigelman offers a simple plan for those looking to take a few days off to enjoy the countryside. "Go to Galilee and get lost," he says. "It is easy to disappear in Upper Galilee. There are so many places to see. But be careful. If you want to hike, figure out how far you can walk in a day and make sure to bring water."

His favorite trip, however, is not in the book. "I used to live in Sharm-e-Sheikh in Sinai back in 1972 when it was really wilderness. There was no road from Sharm to Eilat or anything. I used to guide Sinai tours for the Society of the Protection of Nature," he says.

Now, with two kids, his mode of travel has changed. "For families, tours need to combine two things," he says. "The first is the tour itself while the second is a recreation stop. For example, a family can go to the Dead Sea and hike in one of the nearby wadis, then end the day with a massage or a mud bath."

When planning a family trip, Bigelman believes that the most important thing is to keep in mind that adults and kids enjoy different things. "Kids like details. Adults like the whole picture. Sometimes kids are interested in stones, sometimes in flowers, but never a view. Views are for us," he says.

According to Bigelman, a successful family trip will combine the serious and recreation parts. "If kids do not want to go and are tired, you should stop and try and do something else," he says. "However, kids should all carry something as part of their education. It can be water or a sandwich - something simple - but everyone should carry something."

Another way of making family trips more kid-friendly, says Bigelman, is to go with another family that has also has children. This can be extremely beneficial for hiking trips, as one car can be left at the exit to avoid circling back to the starting point.

Kids should also be told how hard and how long the trip will be. Bigelman knows this from personal experience following a trip in the desert a few years ago with two other families. "Only one other guy knew that we were going to walk 18 kilometers. We told the others that it would only be 10 kilometers. Unfortunately is was a very hot day and the kids began to complain after three or four hours. Luckily we found some pools from which we could jump from one pool to the next one. Still, the kids were so unhappy and so tired and wanted to kill us. Since then, however, it has been one of their favorite experiences.

The book was due out earlier this month, just in time to take your kids on a family trip during Pessah.

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