All Aboard!

One day we decided that it might be fun for the kids to go on a train ride. There's a train from Yerushalayim, that passes through Beit Shemesh, ultimately arriving in Tel Aviv. There are buses from here that go to the train station in both places, so we figured it might work out well.

Until we checked the schedules- we saw that the trains only come every two hours, and the Beitar bus gets to the train station about 5 minutes AFTER the train we would have taken. So Bentzi and I started thinking maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. But when Yisrael overheard our conversation, he got all tzebruchen- "We're not going to go on a train?"- we just couldn't break his little heart, so we decided that we'll just have to work it out!

So, to make a very long story a little shorter, we ended up taking a bus to Beit Shemesh, and taking a train from there to Lod. We then got off the train in Lod, turned around, and took the train in the other direction, to Yerushalyim. After getting off the train, we walked around the mall nearby, and got drinks, before getting back on a bus to come home! (talk about a lot of travelling!)

The kids LOVED it. I wish you could've seen the look on Yisrael's face when the train pulled into the station. He was THRILLED! The first train ride was very pleasant- about 30 minutes- and the kids were very happy to look out the window at all the scenery passing by.

But by the time we boarded the second train (it came late, so we were waiting outside in the heat for a while) they were a little worn out. We ate lunch on the train, and then they wanted to run all over the place- up and down the aisles, through the entire length of the train. They had a great time, but us poor parents were wiped after the whole day!