It had been so nice to see Emma again and meet James and her adorable pets! As I write this on the bottom bunk in this huuuge 16bed dorm I would much rather be falling asleep cuddled up with Jack, their adorable and hilarious dog. Thank you for an amazing visit Emma!!
Now on to the Mega bus... Unfortunately this tale will not be like the famous 'Greyhound Experience' post we did earlier, instead it will be me trying to make a very gentle, relaxing and secure journey seem terrifying. Let me know if it's convincing.
First off today we had a bit of a brain fail in what time we were catching our bus. I blamed Sparks, of course, but really it was my fault (a bit) too for not checking. We left Emma's aiming to get to the station between 10:30 and 11:00 as our bus was at 11:30am... Well we thought it was.
As we walked up to the list of buses on the screen we realised our bus left at 11!! We both said a rather rude word very loudly and ran manically towards the bus terminal, fortunately we got a seat okay and had a few minutes to compose ourselves before leaving.
Within seconds of being on the bus a lady came over who looked a bit like our dear Kray from Chicago, she asked if we could look after her as she'd never been on the bus before. We both smiled politely and said yes before turning to eachother mouthing the words 'She be cray!' fortunately she was actually pretty cute and despite the fact she spent the entire journey smiling at us, she was alright.
However, despite the cray crays, this was a 10 hour journey with only 1 stop in Buffalo which was purely to go through US security. To last us the 10 hours all we had between us was two half empty bottles of water and a half eaten gluten free cheese sandwich #awkward
Amy reassured me we wouldn't die of starvation and we even began to see our 10 hour fast as a good thing - we are both a bit plumper thanks to all the American food we've been eating, a bit of fasting could be beneficial! So we got comfortable in our reclinable seats feeling positive about our new weightloss strategy... 2 hours in and our stomachs was having other ideas.
I was ravenous - I could have eaten a small child. And to make maters worse we had to go through immigration with border control - super!
Everyone waddled off the bus stiff and with the beginning of cankles, we had a big dog smell our bags first which was rather amusing, then we had to scan our bags even though the man 'watching' the screen was too busy helping people put there bags on and off the belt to notice anything people may had stashed in their bags!
After the bag fiasco we had the joy of queuing to be questioned. Our guy was nice and seemed to be so baffled by the amount of times we'd been back and forth to the states that he just let us go before giving us the 'you best not be getting a job here!' lecture.
Once back in our swanky bus Sparks checked with the driver and we were relieved to discover we were stopping to have a food break in 3 hours time. Wahoo! We obviously slept for these 3 hours
Once we arrived at the bus station we had 10 minutes to hike up to the building and buy food - quite the task! Everyone hurdled off the bus and ran to the station in need of a decent toilet, water and most importantly FOOD! Amy went to subway and was served by possibly the dumbest woman I have ever seen. Watching her putting through Amy's order was ridiculous, she couldn't understand our accents (because she was a cretin) so kept saying 'what?!' 'erm... What did you sayay?!' in her ridiculous valley-girl-on-crack accent. Hearing Amy repeat the words 'meatball' and at one point 'balls of meat' was priceless though.
Eventually someone helped her and we were on our way. She be cray.
We arrived in Philadelphia just after 10pm and made our way towards the station, to catch the subway to our hostel. We ended up going in the wrong direction for afew stops before realising we were heading the wrong way- easily done - but after so long on a coach we were past caring. Once off the subway we headed to the hostel and passed some people sat outside a bar, one rather merry woman was amazed by us and when she found out we'd been traveling was sweet enough to offer to buy us a drink. We politely thanked her but explained how we needed a bed ASAP so she let us go shouting 'You go girls!' as we left. Lad.
So far the people in Philly are pretty friendly!
We quickly found our hostel and were welcomed by two lovely staff at reception who made us feel very welcome. The rooms are huge here and our 16 bed room is like a huge sleepover party ... Minus the party, and with more foreign people. Fun!
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