aboard the LimoLiner

There are several common ways to get between New York and Boston: plane, train, car, and once a year, bike. Then there are also bus options – Greyhound/Peter Pan, and the various Chinatown Bus companies.

If you’re up for a really great alternative, try LimoLiner, a luxurious bus that goes between the New York and Boston BackBay Hilton hotels. For the same price as the Amtrak train, you get a business-class seat, with wifi internet access, a meal (in my case, breakfast), a concierge/attendant, XM Radio, a movie, more legroom than you can imagine.. I even video-Skyped my mom in Moscow! (Thankfully, there’s a cellphone-free zone in the back of the bus for those of you who don’t understand Russian.) After taking the Greyhound one way, this surely felt like heaven, or as close as they’ll let me get to it.

…but there are just a few downsides:
— poor schedule. the last bus leaves Boston at 4:30pm, just before the end of the business day; the last bus from New York is at 6:15pm. (Compare that with Greyhound’s legendary bus leaving either NYC or Boston at 12:30am!)

— the pickup/drop-off locations — unless the Hilton is near your destination, it’s a bit of a schlep from other transit options.

— the internet signal drops off intermittently. Most notably, it dropped when we entered my old neighborhood, on 86th + Columbus in NYC.

Otherwise, I heartily recommend it, and, providing that the LimoLiner schedule and drop-off locations expand, I’m delighted to take it all the time. (Now if only they could do something about the NYC traffic…)

My LimoLiner breakfast: