Travel day! But no planes this time . . . a bus!
We needed to get from Jerusalem to Eilat, about 4 hours South. We looked into various options, including flying and renting our own car, both of which were either super expensive and/or not convenient. We had taken the bus to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, an easy 50 minute route, so we were encouraged to try the bus again. We bought our tickets for Eilat when we arrived to Jerusalem’s Central Terminal, to be certain we had all our bases covered.
Final Morning in Jerusalem
We were booked on a 2:00pm bus out of Jerusalem. That left enough time in the morning for further exploring of Old Town by foot. We stopped by cousin Joey & Alicia’s shopkeeper friends to say another hello/goodbye, and Omar pointed us to an amazing hole-in-the-wall bakery that we bought bread from for breakfast, as well as a stall for some fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice. The kind shop owner let the girls flex their muscle to help :) Finally, we did a repeat visit to the Wailing Wall. Meandering around Old Town one final time was great.
Bus 444
We left the Old City around 12:30pm to take the Light Rail to the Central Terminal. Global Subway on the move!
Fortunately we had assigned seats on the Jerusalem->Eilat bus, so it was smooth & easy to board the bus and find our seats. We were told that the bus would make one rest stop, and that we’d arrive to Eilat at 6:30pm. OK!
How’d we fill four hours on the bus? We started with a few pages of Writing workbooks with the girls (“school lite”) and then they read their Kindles for a bit. Doug & I then listened to podcasts (so great to catch up on NYT The Daily episodes) or read on our phones, while the girls played with an interactive Science-based app I recently purchased. We also stared out the window quite a bit. The scenery was actually super cool. It started very arid & mountainous, and then we made our way for some time along the Dead Sea. The sunset was gorgeous.
Eilat Overnight
The bus made a 20-minute stop at some random rest stop, and then we carried on our way. The whole experience was actually very pleasant and went by surprisingly quickly! Before you knew it we were in Eilat, and making the short walk to our hotel for the night, The Sunset Inn.
We popped back out for a quick bite to eat at a spot called Omer’s nearby. It had a 5-star rating in Google Maps, with 1,000+ reviews, so we were intrigued. It was awesome! We all have fatigue of the same hummus/pita/falafel/shawarma food cuisine we’ve been having these past 10 days or so, and Omer’s offered fresh, real food and a varied menu. Heavenly! I actually just had a salad with radishes, herbs, olive oil & lemon dressing and grilled chicken, and it was amazing! So were the lightly fried eggplants. Never underestimate the power of fresh food with real ingredients!
We hit the sac early because we had an early wake-up for our Israel/Jordan border crossing the next morning . . .
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