Which way is best will depend on what you like I guess. There are other ways of doing the same thing.
You can make toolbars or menus with buttons to go to common paths. You can do that using Favorites (which you can filter by category or path if you only want to see part of the list) or by creating individual buttons for each path.
You can create Tab Groups which open tabs for each of your common paths, so they're always there when you need them.
If you use the keyboard a lot, you can bind hotkeys to certain paths and you can also create aliases which give you quick access to common folders. (e.g. I can type /d to go to my downloads folder.)
If the list of paths is dynamic -- e.g. you want quick access to everything in MyMainFolder and MyPersonalFolder, but what's in there changes over time -- then you can create a toolbar and/or menu which lists those paths for you to click on. (See here and here.)
You could also have a "home" folder with shortcuts to the common folders. Or probably a bunch of other ways I haven't thought of...
As for favorites in the folder tree, no they don't expand. If you go to a sub-folder or the parent folder then you'll jump to the "real" location in the main part of the folder tree.
Hope those ideas help!