Travel

Recommended Reviews

Travel Pack USA offers bus tours of attractions to various big tourist cities including Canada.  They are currently offering a buy 2 tickets, get one free promotion and my crazy family thought his offer was great.  Considering there are 6 of us. so 2 of us were free!

A great way to have a cheap family vacation, I think.

Our family did the 3 days, 2 nights tour of Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Virginia, and NY.

The bus left early Saturday morning at 7am.  I advise to get a good nights sleep because going hangover or running on lack of sleep is death!  I was getting nauseous from being out the night before and riding a bus for 8 hours to DC is NO FUN!!

Highlights:

* You get to see a ton of places ( more touristy places) in one day then you would if you planned this on your own.  Mainly because you are following a particular itinerary made up by the package.  Most are free but others you can purchase a la carte or if you buy all the extras, you can get a discount or a free dinner for one of the nights.

* If you hate driving but like to travel, this is ideal.  The bus did a pretty good job of getting in and out of places fairly quick.  We hardly hit traffic until the ride back to Boston where there was an accident but we only has slowed down for maybe a few minutes.

* You can usually skip ahead of lines since you are in a large group and already have tickets to certain places like museums in hand.

* You stay at hotels like the Comfort Inn or Hampton Suites which offer hot or continental breakfast.  Rooms are pretty decent and provide a good nights sleep for next days travels.

* They offer Chinese buffet style for dinner which have a pretty good and decent selection of authentic cuisine.  You can even get lobster or crab legs at an all you can eat price, around $13 which includes tip.

* The tour guide is pretty friendly and knowledgeable about the places you are visiting.

* They play movies on the bus!

* The tour is conducted in English Chinese- a great way to learn a new language if you don t speak it!

* Book another trip with them and mention that you already have taken one and you can get a discount.

Lowlights:

* The bus can get uncomfortable when you are sitting on it for hours at a time.

* Sometimes you can feel rushed when stopping at attractions since you are running on a pretty tight schedule. (don t be late. They will get upset)

* Be sure to bring plenty of water and snacks, sometimes due to scheduling, you may end up eating later than usual-so have something to tie you over till then.

* Sometimes you can get those loud Asians on your bus who talk loud non stop! Or worse a crying baby!

* You are running on the bus s schedule, so you may feel rushed.

* You cant use the bathroom on the bus.  This actually works both ways because 1. you don t want to smell piss from the day before but 2. you may have an emergency in which case you must notify you tour guide and she/he will make the appropriate stop for you.  Luckily, we never had any emergencies

Overall, this was a fun trip and it was neat site seeing.  Grab some friends and get on the bus!