Place to see: Dead Sea, Jerusalem, Israel

About this place:

The Dead Sea (Hebrew: יָם הַ‏‏מֶ‏ּ‏לַ‏ח‎, Yām Ha-Melaḥ, "Sea of Salt"; Arabic: ألبَحْر ألمَيّت, al-Baḥrᵘ l-Mayyitⁱ, "Dead Sea") is a salt lake between the West Bank and Israel to the west, and Jordan to the east. At 420 metres (1,378 ft) below sea level,[2] its shores are the lowest point on Earth that are on dry land. At 330 m deep (1,083 feet), the Dead Sea is the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. It is also the world's second saltiest body of water, after Lake Asal in Djibouti. With 30 percent salinity, it is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean [3]. Israeli experts say it is nine times saltier than the Mediterranean Sea (31.5% salt versus 3.5% for the Mediterranean). The Dead Sea is 67 kilometres (42 mi) long and 18 kilometres (11 mi) wide at its widest point. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge for King David. It was one of the world's first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers.

The Dead Sea's climate offers year-round sunny skies and dry air with low pollution. It has less than 50 mm mean annual rainfall and a summer average temperature between 32 and 39 °C. Winter average temperatures range between 20 and 23 °C. The region has weakened ultraviolet radiation, particularly the UVB (erythrogenic rays), and an atmosphere characterized by a high oxygen content due to the high barometric pressure. The shore is the lowest dry place in the world.[6] Proximity to the sea affects the temperature of a place because the sea temperature changes due to the penetration of the sun in the summer. During winter months, sea temperatures tend to be much higher than summer temperature and vice versa during summer months, this is the outcome of slow penetration from the sun into the sea as it is a huge mass and takes a long time to warm up.