Where did our Greyhound bus go?

What exactly is the best way to travel America? I'm sure thousands and thousands of people have asked themselves this question when planning their grand adventures across the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Could it be the quick and reliable, yet expensive option of internal flights? Well, maybe not that reliable anymore; especially in light of the American Airlines incident earlier this year, which saw a man who PAID for a ticket get forcibly removed from the aircraft because the AIRLINE had overbooked the flight.

Thieving bastards.

So, in short, even buying an actual ticket for an ACTUAL flight doesn't secure you a stress free journey these days!

But it wasn't the fear of American security dragging us off of planes by our hair that ruled internal flights off our US itinerary - it was the fact that we are cheap as fuck and still haven't been able to shift that backpacker's shoe-string budget mentality from the forefront of our minds.

By far the cheapest option was the ol' Greyhound Bus Line, which I've certainly heard mostly terrifying mixed reviews about over the years. But hey, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all that!

When booking Greyhound buses, you can either book a standard Economy ticket or pay a little extra to book an Economy Extra or a Flexible Ticket, which secures you priority seating; meaning you're more likely to get on the bus you want rather than have to wait for the next one if it's busy. Going against every fibre in our frugal bones, we booked Economy Extra tickets because we wanted some peace of mind that we'd actually get on the buses we'd booked (lol, keep reading to see how this worked out for us) and that we'd get to sit next to each other.

The worst experience we had was  - unfortunately - our very first one, our journey from Boston to New York in the aftermath of the Boston Blizzard (AKA Storm Imafuckupyourholiday). Basically, on our second day in Boston, we (and millions more) were hit by one giant fucker of a Northeastern Blizzard which reaped havoc on several North East states; grinding public transport to a halt, forcing businesses to shut and generally just making life a living hell.

Our bus wasn't meant to leave Boston until two days after the bulk of the blizzard had stopped, so we were optimistic the roads would be back open and that Greyhound would have resumed service as normal by this point and a quick glance at their website confirmed our bus was on time.  Amen, maybe things were going to turn around for us. 

In all honestly, we were looking forward to leaving Boston behind. It is a beautiful place that I'd love to go back to one day, but the blizzard coupled with being robbed wasn't exactly the start to the holiday we'd wanted.

However, it soon became clear that the universe wasn't done with us yet.

Our bus never turned up at the Greyhound station.

An authoritative looking lady in a fluorescent jacket broke this devastating news to a queue of disgruntled passengers at 11:01 (our scheduled departure was 11:00) and let's just say that it did not go down well.

One raging man even went as far as to shout, "this is going to be WAR!" and for a brief moment I felt like I was in 1970s Vietnam.

Ah, Americans.

We never actually got an explanation as to where our bus went or why it didn't show up - I can only assume it got buried under an avalanche somewhere - what we did get, however, was a complimentary Greyhound bus ticket that would be emailed to us at a later date. Make it rain!!

HOWEVER, as is life specifically our lives, we never actually received our complimentary tickets.

That angry man was right, it was going to be war and Greyhound were about to get torched on Yelp, especially as we'd booked tickets to see the New York Knicks that night and I wasn't going to miss out on that game for NO MAN.

Luckily - and I say this lightly as had we actually been lucky we would have got on the bus we'd paid and booked for - New York is a pretty major route from Boston and it wasn't long before the next bus turned up. I waved my Economy Extra ticket (someone's doing well) in the air and scurried onto the bus quicker than a New York minute and for the first time, it felt like we'd won. YEAH, FUCK YOU, UNIVERSE.

On the whole I'd say that our Greyhound experience was a good one for the following reasons:

• We got to all our destinations...eventually
• The driving we experienced didn't give me constant visions of my death, much dissimilar to our experiences in Malaysia...
• The buses were clean, comfy and made for great napping opportunities between cities
• Our shit didn't get stolen
• 2/3 of our buses were on time
• It was a nice way to see America. You see a tonne of highways mostly, but it's still nice to watch the world go by.

And had it actually worked, the free wifi would have made it onto that list too.