electric relaxation

I booked an overnight trip to Albany via Greyhound bus from Toronto. Turns out that’s actually one of the easier ways to get from my place to my parents’ house, especially since there’s a Toronto Greyhound terminal at Bay and Dundas, two blocks away from my apartment.

I’m in Syracuse right now, where I had to transfer off the NYC-bound express to this Syracus-Schenectady-Albany route. So far it’s been a bit of a mixed bag. The first bus I was one was older and not as comfy, but it was good enough for me to sleep pretty much the entire way. I didn’t actually know I needed to transfer until I got to the terminal – they don’t exactly make that clear on the website, probably because they know that pampered princesses like me would take the train or fly instead if they called that out. Anyway on this new bus I’ve got wifi, an A/C power outlet, and the entire two-seat row to myself, so I’m living large.

I had to line up in the freezing cold outside the terminal in Toronto which was also really annoying; if you don’t do that you aren’t actually guaranteed a seat on the bus, though they actually have several waiting and of course people near the back of the line ended up getting on the newer/fancier bus.

The border crossing was painful; we almost made it out of there in about a half hour but then we were delayed twice as long because one girl had to be sent back to Canada (she was Chilean I believe). She was part of a group of girls, all international (Spain, Chile and Korea, wtf?!)  travelling together and apparently it wreaked havoc on all the hotel and travel plans for the entire group. There were many tearful goodbyes exchanged. Some of them are now on this bus with me, but I feel like it’s a bit too rude to ask what happened given the dramatic conclusion.