Day 13: January 7, 2014, Toronto, ON
The way to Toronto was such a stressful experience. Not really, but it could've been better. My bus was scheduled for 1:30AM, so I left the apartment around 12:45AM or so and took the train there. It was SO, SO windy that night. The ~5 minute walk to the station was just awful and cold. But I don't think it was worth a cab since I would only have to survive the walk and after that, my stop would be where the bus terminal is. And I'm glad I didn't resort to a cab after what happened.
So I reached my stop, and it was already around 1:25AM or so, so I was sort of panicking about missing my bus. To make matters worse, I didn't know which gate my bus was in!! I tried looking at the screen that displayed all the gates, but couldn't find mine :\ So after some minutes of confusion and wasting time, I just ran down to where all the Greyhound terminals were to look for it. The workers probably saw me looking super lost and confused so they called out to me. Only then I found out that all services that went north were canceled until 5:30AM >:( No notification or anything from Greyhound, seriously? I purchased my ticket online, so the least they could do is send a notification or something. As far as I know, they didn't post anything on their website either, not that I would've checked though, just saying, since it was unexpected. I should've known better though, there was a huge storm up there..but still.
After half an hour of debating whether to just wait it out or head back to the apartment. If I chose the former, then I don't have to go out in the cold again and save a few dollars. The second option, I get to nap comfortably for three hours, but have to carry all my stuff back and forth. I opted for the latter because I wanted to be comfortable.
When I got back to the station, I couldn't figure out how to get in because they closed the entrance from the train station!! And it was super cold, still. I had to go outside to get back in and by that time it was already 5:30, so I worried about missing the bus after having it delayed. When I got down the bus terminal there was a long line, so I was glad to see that I didn't miss the my ride.
That was, until everyone started running up the escalator all of a sudden and it turns out the two buses were already full from all the delays and they ran to a different gate for the next bus.
Trooped over and waited and waited until 7:30AM until the right buses came. At that point I was already regretting booking my return ticket earlier that day because if I just went home home instead that would've been a waste of $160. I was honestly debating that during the wait, and I couldn't get a refund either, but I waited it out. During the wait in the line I did meet some really cool people, but I won't be keeping contact with them. It was hard joining into their conversations so I don't think I made much of an impression.
By 8:00AM the bus finally took off yay! The journey there wasn't too bad imo because I slept through most of it. There were empty seats in the back so I just went there and slept til I finally woke up around 4:30PM. I actually missed a rest stop :( by that time we were nearing Buffalo, NY and it was snowing quite a bit.
There was some wait when we arrived at the station because we combining with a different bus.
I finally arrived at Toronto around 9:00PM. It was FREEZING. It was 0 with windchill of -35 or colder. At that point I had no Canadian Dollars and the cabs didn't take Discover or Diners Club International so I had no way of getting to the hotel aside from walking. Even though it was a 15 minute walk, it was painful :( I made a couple of stops on the way, my hands were hurting like a bitch because I had no gloves and had things to carry.
Eventually I did arrive at our inn and ended with playing some card games before calling it a night, not to mention some seemingly drunk Irish(?) guy who knocked on our door and started talking to us and even came back later on that night!! At that point it was kinda creepy so we ignored it.
So that's it for the way there. I'll write up the rest of the journey in another post since I already wrote a lot.
Anyways, until next time!
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