Just before
our dim sum lunch, Danielle and I had discovered that our online
reservations for the China town bus hadn’t worked. Committed to getting
to Philadelphia that day, we found a payphone and called around. All the
cheap train seats were taken, but a Greyhound bus was soon to leave.
Nobody at the station picked up the phone, so we just hurried over there
and hoped for the best. At about 2:55 we got there. At 2:57 I had
secured tickets for the 3pm bus (which we were trying to catch) by using
a touch screen kiosk with a touch screen so bad that nobody else seemed
to want to try it. (You had to tap each button about 7 times before it
would register.) It was also super busy.
But we got
in line, and waited. And waited… And waited some more. Various people
got loaded onto a bus in very small groups, until about 4pm when it
seemed boarding would happen for real. It did, but not for us. Greyhound
must have oversold the bus or something, but at any rate we did not get
on this bus. There would be a later bus, though. Luckily that 4:45pm bus
had space for us (but not many of the people behind us in line) and left
close to on time. Our friendly bus driver explained that every long
weekend results in such a mess.
Traffic on
the way to Philadelphia wasn’t too bad, and I think we arrived around 9.
After a quick meal of Pho, we decided on a taxi to our hostel: Chamounix
Mansion. It’s a cool house in a nice park, and we were sad to only be
able to stay one night. We had a 4-bed room to ourselves, which made
everything all the nicer.
