So if you’ve hung around me much at all and discussed travel, you’ve no doubt heard me talk about the Megabus.  One of my friends has heard me say it so many times he now yells “MEGA!” every time I mention it.  At any rate, I’m always willing to share my stories about it because people are always curious when you tell them you took a bus somewhere a good distance away.  There is no doubt a stigma about bus travel.

    Holly and I started researching Iceland some time back and quickly found that people were saying it was expensive.  Just how expensive was a little hard to gauge… but expensive none-the-less.  We wanted to do this trip more or less free style; with only plane tickets, a rental car, and the first night’s hotel booked, so cutting costs as much as possible up front while those costs were known was important to us… enter Megabus.  Holly and I had a good experience with Megabus the first time around (you can read about it here) so we thought we’d give it another look.  Tickets were a whopping $22 this time… that’s total for both of us, round trip.  After comparing flights, taking the Megabus to Washington D.C. and then flying to Iceland from there as opposed to flying to D.C. from Knoxville and then on to Iceland was going to save us a little over $600.  $11 a person versus $300 per person is a pretty substantial difference.  So we could a) leave on a plane Sunday morning and arrive in DC just in time to wait around the airport for 10 hours for the flight to Iceland or b) leave on a bus Saturday night and arrive in DC with plenty of time to goof off and make it to the airport for the very same flight to Iceland and SAVE $600.  Pretty straight forward.

    I’ll be honest and tell you that the ride there was pretty darn miserable.  It was outrageously hot on the bus for the first half of the trip.  I was luckily wearing my trusty zip-off pants and had layered, so I stripped down to shorts and a t-shirt… it was just hard to get away from the heat.  I think I dosed a little, but I couldn’t get to sleep.  The drivers recognized the problem and left the doors open at the rest stop to try and dump the heat… literally everyone got off the bus to stand in the cold to cool off.  15 minutes with the doors open did the trick and the rest of the ride there just fine.  We all put our clothes back on and were comfortable.

   After arriving in D.C., Holly and I walked over to the nearest Metro station (Union) and took it to the Rosslyn station where we caught the Metro bus to the airport.  We mistakenly thought we’d have plenty of time to get to the airport and drop our stuff off at the hotel (more on that in a minute) and then go back to D.C. for some sight seeing… that didn’t work out so well though.  We bought the all day Metro passes and then 2 and a half hours later finally made it to the airport… we had no idea.  We missed the first Metro bus by apparently minutes and then had to stand there for another hour waiting on the next one.  The bus ride itself took over 45 minutes with very little traffic.  Don’t try to pull this off with tight timelines is the take away here.  We decided not to risk being late for our flight by going back in to town and gave our all day passes to some other travelers leaving the airport.

    The way home was less eventful.  The Metro bus was waiting at the airport when we arrived and we traversed the subway system with ease.  We hung out at Union Station until it was close to time for the Megabus to depart and then made the short walk over and boarded almost immediately.  Timing is everything.  The ride home was comfortable and I slept almost the entire trip. 

    I’ll again be honest and say I was a bit grumpy from all the traveling.  When we made it to Union station and then had a couple hours to burn before the bus was to leave… I was none too excited to be hanging out.  There is a convenience factor to flying that can sometimes be hard to put a value on.  We realistically got to Iceland the same time we would have had we flown and we got home the morning after we would have arrived home had we flown (assuming we didn’t miss any connections… which seems to happen every time we fly).  We could have slept in our own bed as opposed to sleeping on a bus.  At the time, I would have paid the $600 to just be home.  600 bucks is 600 bucks… I’d do it again.  Now that Megabus is going to Atlanta, you can bet I’ll be looking into flying out of Hartsfield-Jackson instead of Dulles… even though I HATE Hartsfield with a passion.  Is it worth it to save a bunch of extra money?  I happen to think so.

The Day Room

    As a funny aside; when looking at the layover in D.C., Holly and I jokingly talked about trying to find a hotel that rented rooms by the hour so we could crash for a bit.  After doing some digging, we found that a lot of hotels actually offer what is called a “day room”.  Check-in times are generally early in the morning and I believe our check-out time was at 8 or 9PM… past when we needed to be gone anyway.  We compared the prices ($70) to the various airline clubs in the airport ($40 per person with our credit card benefit… although that doesn’t seem like much of a benefit) and decided it was a no-brainer to have a private room / bathroom and a bed we could take a nap in as opposed to just lounge chairs and finger food.  We got the room and were able to hang around and have a restful afternoon and then took the free shuttle to the airport and arrived in Iceland very rested and ready to tackle a new country.  Good times!

–Dan Thompson