If you want to get up close and personal when seeing a country, there’s no better way to travel than long distance bus. Planes just whisk you from city to city, tedious trips between the airport and the city itself notwithstanding. Trains are often hailed for their ability to provide views you can’t get by air, but often trains go through culverts and tunnels. You want to know the real place, get a bus. Interstate Buses in America are often maligned as dirty and dangerous, but I’ve never had any problems; although I’ve only travelled heavily touristed routes, and your mileage may vary if you’re getting the bus from Earwax Gulch, Iowa to Excess Covid Deaths, Tennessee. You mileage will literally vary if you’re stabbed to death on the way, which would reduce the number of miles you travel considerably. California roadside stops really go in for the ye olde world feel. On my last trip to the state, we’d stopped in Kettleman on the journey along the Interstate 5 from Los Angeles to San
How I would have loved to have been around for the golden days of travel, when people dressed up to fly, went on long ocean voyages, and there were porters and valets and cocktails. I can see myself in a darling powder blue travel suit, my hair in pin curls set off with a jaunty hat, with my matching leather luggage taken care of my someone who calls me “madame”. But of course in those days, travel was completely out of the financial reach of schlubs like me, and looking elegant is beyond the question in any era. I can spend two hours trying to make myself look polished, walk out the door, get caught by a slight breeze and seem to have crawled through a hedge. I could don a twinset and pin curls and still arrive at the airport looking like I fell down the stairs on the way, which I very well may have done. So I’ll accept the indignities of travel in this era, kicking suitcases around the airport, being submitted to full body scans, and donning a plain dress and capri pants for the ex