33km (21 miles) N of Haifa

Founded by German Jews in the mid-1930s, Nahariya is a quiet summer resort, popular with older tourists and retired, European-born Israelis. It used to be popular with Israeli honeymooners, but most have moved on to more exotic places. Maybe there's a connection between Nahariya as a honeymoon site and the fact that archaeologists dug up a Canaanite fertility goddess on its beach.

The town has a pretty main street, Ha-Ga'aton Boulevard, with a stream (in winter) running down its median, shaded by breezy eucalyptus trees. With its eucalyptus-shaded shops running down to a sparkling sea, Nahariya has real potential, but so far it remains sleepy and low-key; there are a few rather ordinary shops, cafes, and restaurants in the downtown area.

Lifeguards go home and lock the fences around the public beaches at 5pm, so if you want to hit the beach without courting skin cancer, this is not the ideal place. The sparkling sea is sometimes a soup of garbage washed down from chaotic Lebanon; to make matters worse, the city has no sewage treatment plant. But Nahariya has many fans, and it's a pleasant base for exploring the northern coast and Western Galilee.