I'm sitting on the 12th floor balcony of my beachfront hotel in Tel Aviv, eating fresh melon, kiwi fruit, orange and grapes. The sun is setting over the Mediterranean; people are swimming and playing volleyball. It is early winter.

I'm sitting in a European-style cafe in Tel Aviv. I walk out of the door and within minutes I'm in a bustling raucous street market buying delicious falafels.

I'm sitting in Tel Aviv's equivalent of the WestQuay complex. A teenager walks towards me carrying three shiny pink party balloons. Helium-filled they float gently above his head as he ambles past. His right arm holds the balloons. His left shoulder an automatic machine gun. He is dressed in khaki uniform. Nobody bats an eye.

That is Israel for you, a brilliantly surreal, unusual country. We in Britain should know as we live in a pretty unusual country too.

Israel is different though. Five hours by plane, just the other side of Europe. It is a country where the army is ingrained into every part of the people's consciousness. Where most of the soldiers that you see are young men and women barely out of their teens. It takes a while to get used to.

You cannot ignore the fact that you see more guns on the streets of Israel in one hour then in a decade in England. But at no time did I feel unsafe. Winchester High Street on a wet Sunday afternoon would carry as much menace, well almost.

Israel's a mad place, but in a great way. A small country with as diverse a group of people as anywhere in the world. With enough ancient history, archaeology and religion to last anyone a lifetime.

A country where people can go swimming in the Mediterranean in late November.

A country where the open air street markets are a slice of the Middle East in their colour and noise.

In Tel Aviv you can eat the best falafel in your life and then moments later be walking in the White City, the Bauhaus-inspired buildings in the early-mid International Style that have been a World Heritage Site since 2003.

The main cities are the ying and the yang. Jerusalem is the religious centre as well as the site of fantastic museums such as the Israel and the Tower of David with its spectacular nighttime sound and light show on the mountaintop city's 4,000-year history.

It is a terrific blaze of impressionistic images projected onto the walls of the Citadel and a great introduction to the city's rich history.

The one place in Jerusalem not to be missed is the Wailing Wall, at the heart of what Israel is. It is the only remaining fragment of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in the second century AD and Judaism's holiest shrine.

Running it a close second is the church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the spot where Christ was executed. It brings together Christians from around the world, Protestants, Catholics and the Orthodox amid the jumble of the Old City.

Motty Saar our enthusiastic guide took us down the fascinating Western Wall tunnels, a long underground passage exposing and running the entire length of the wall. Stout shoes needed.

For anyone with a sense of history it is easy to be overwhelmed. This really is the cradle of Western civilisation, developing long before the Greeks and Romans came on the scene. There are Roman remains, Byzantine arches, Crusader ramparts, Mameluke towers, Ottoman moats, seemingly around every corner.

Tel Aviv is much more modern and cosmopolitan, the 'city that never sleeps', a place founded by European Jews in 1909 on sand dunes just north of the ancient city of Jaffa. Jerusalem is the city of Government and religion. Tel Aviv is the place to go to have a good time.

There's a diversity of places, coffee shops, bars, restaurants, basement night clubs and rough and ready dives that hipsters in east London would die for.

As our nightlife guide Orr Rein said in one: "It takes a lot of money to look like nothing has been spent on it."

Smoking is banned inside bars but is widely ignored: "After all, this is the Middle East," he says, laconically.

My favourite place in Tel Aviv was the Georgian bar/restaurant Nanuchka set up by people from the Caucasian republic. Raucous but welcoming.

The personal highlight of the trip was the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum on a leafy, shady hillside outside Jerusalem. A place I have long wanted to see. It includes an extraordinary space called the Hall of Names.

It is a circular room, a memorial to each and every Jew who died. The domed roof has 600 photos of victims and below a water-filled pit dug into the rock. The photos are regularly changed.

You stand looking up at the faces, some young, some old, some happy, some sad, some beautiful, others not so beautiful, then you look into the darkness below and for a disconcerting moment you feel caught somehow between life and death.

It feels good to get back into the sunlight at the end of the museum with a lovely viewing opening out onto the Israeli countryside.

It helps to have a good guide to take you off the beaten track. Ours was the knowledgeable Motty Saar full of information about his beloved country.

In Jerusalem, a word with a Palestinian shopkeeper near Via Dolorosa and we were taken through a local Arab school for a normally inaccessible view of the Temple Mount, one of the holiest shrines in Islam.

The food in Israel was terrific. It is a hybrid of styles, because of its location on the Med and at the gateway to the Middle East.

In Jerusalem Olives and Fish restaurant deserves a mention but my favourite was The Eucalyptus Restaurant and its chef Moshe Basson.

A few decades ago he took the brave step to serve 'Biblical Food', that is largely based on food that was present 2,000 years ago - figs, pomegranate, dates, wheat, barley, grapes.

I recommend the Maklubah: chicken, rice, vegetables, saffron, almond yoghurt, and Jordanian salad. Cooked and then turned over onto a large dish before serving. Wonderful.

Factfile

Andrew Napier flew with Easyjet from Gatwick to Tel Aviv and back with Easyjet to Luton. The cost of the flight and return was £424.98.

He stayed at the Prima Royale Hotel in Jerusalem (the only place he's ever stayed where a piano is played at breakfast) and the average double room is £108 a night and the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the seafront in Tel Aviv where prices for a standard room range from £126-£217 a night. (Israeli hotels do not have star ratings) Motty Saar, www.mottotour.com, saarmo@gmail.com