Rant: Spent 4 hours trying to find a cheap bus from Madrid to Porto

I was planning a trip from Madrid to Porto last month and thought I'd grab a budget bus for like 30 euros. But the websites kept glitching or showing sold out times, so I spent a whole afternoon clicking through different sites. BlaBlaCar, FlixBus, some local ones I'd never heard of. I finally got a 25 euro ticket on a random site called Rede Expressos after reading reviews in Spanish. Turns out I wasted 4 hours on something that should have taken 20 minutes if I'd just used one search engine. Anybody else run into this mess trying to book between smaller cities in Europe?

2 comments

2 Comments

mila_reed1d ago

Four hours clicking around sounds like you made it way harder than it had to be. FlixBus usually covers that route for under 30 euros with no mystery sites involved. Just seems like overthinking a simple trip booking.

kelly.keith1d ago

Mila, honest question here: did you actually look at FlixBus for that specific route on those exact travel dates, or are you just going by their general pricing? Because I've seen those 30 euro prices jump way up on weekends and holidays. Curious if your experience matches the booking grid I was stuck in.