Grand Bus Tour of Efrat

As I blogged yesterday, my husband and I spent Shabbat in Efrat at a family simcha, joyous occasion. One thing that bus travelers learn pretty quickly is that you should take the first bus that comes, even if the route is a bit indirect, because, especially on a Friday, you don't know what and when will follow. And considering that we did have the time and hadn't been in and around Efrat for quite a long time, it seemed like a very good opportunity to see how much the city has grown.

Just in case you're interested, we had looked into joining the very first families for Efrat and had signed up, but for various reasons we decided against it and moved to Shiloh. No doubt that our lives and our children's lives would have had been very different if we had moved to Efrat. Besides having some relatives there, we have many friends who live in Efrat. It is a place I'm fond of, but for many reasons I'm glad that we decided on Shiloh.

So here are the photos of the ride to Efrat from Jerusalem and the grand tour until we got off at the "Te'ena Commercial Center."

We also took the bus back to Jerusalem, and ironically had the very same busdriver both ways. To make it more interesting he had once been a driver on the Shiloh-Jerusalem route. And to make the trip back even easier, the second to last stop on the Efrat bus is the second stop on the buses to our area which leave from the area of Binyanei Ha'uma. We got off the second bus at the "northern city line" and traveled the rest of the way by tremp to Shiloh. We certainly would have taken a bus, but none came.