Sydney - LAX - Kelowna (via Calgary) - Big White Ski Resort - LAX (via Vancouver) - Boston - New Orleans - Chicago - Reno - Heavenly Ski Resort - LAX - Sydney
I had a great nights sleep in my Viewliner bunk. As promised, here is a picture of us in our bunks this morning. Note the extra width at the head of the bed to make it easier to turn over and also the significant headroom for me in the top bunk...
We pulled into Atlanta, Georgia at about 8:30am. This meant we had made up nearly all the time we lost at Washington. Atlanta was quite a big stop passenger wise, many getting off and a few joining. It is also a refuelling stop for the locomotives. I took a few shots and a quick video of the config whilst stretching my legs on the platform...
Dining Car service is not offered whilst in a stop, so as soon as we started moving from Atlanta, we headed for the dining car for breakfast. Three egg omelette with mushrooms for me and scrambled eggs for Diane, along with juice and coffee of course.
When we came back from breakfast, Michelle was still converting our roomette into day mode, so we sat in a vacant room until it was ready. I decided to do a quick video of the Viewliner Roomette...
After we left Atlanta, we travelled thru Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and finally Louisiana just before nightfall. Most of the day was spent looking out at typical scenery in the deep south, fields and swamps. I was unable to take any pictures of quality whatsoever, the windows were filthy from when the train left New York and was flying thru New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Washington, throwing up snow and grit from the rails and distributing it on the windows.
The only 2 pictures I took were an example of plant life which plagues the south...
These are examples of a Japanese vine, Kudzu, which was introduced in the southern states to control soil erosion. Unfortunately, it has just taken over and smothers everything in it's path, growing straight up and over and strangling all types of trees. According to a website I looked at, it can grow up to 12" a day!!! I guess it's a bit like our own Lantana in Australia.
We finally rolled into New Orleans on time, having made up the 2 hrs from Washington. Michelle the SCA turned out to be somewhere in between Cindy and Bill. Always a smile, but you really had to wait a while to see her or go look for her. She has given us some tips for eateries from a locals perspective (she lives in the city). All the tips we received previously were given the thumbs down by her because, although the food was good, they were overpriced and touristy. If her recommendations turn out OK then we'll forgive her for having to wait so long to get a juice...lol. The dining car crew didn't improve however. They were nice enough, but light years behind the previous crews in professionalism and demeanour.
What went wrong you may ask...
When we went to claim our luggage, only 2 of the 4 bags have made it to New Orleans. Dianes's small suitcase that we would normally use as carry-on but decided to check thru because of the space restrictions in the roomette was missing, as was my new ski boot bag with obviously my new boots underneath and most of my ski gear and other clothing. The AMTRAK guy had a few different scenarios about what may have went wrong, but we really don't know at this stage. He said that 99.9% of time they come thru on the next train (ie: tomorrow night) and urged us not to panic too much, that AMTRAK would deliver them to the hotel when they arrive. Diane elected not to take his advise and went into panic mode immediately. I asked him why would somebody not ring thru to say 'Hey, we've got 2 bags here that should be on The Crescent to New Orleans, let the owners know they are safe and will arrive tomorrow'? He said that it normally doesn't happen, they just stick them on the next train without ringing thru. Perhaps it should happen that way. I know I'd be much more comfortable right now if somebody at New Orleans said 'Sorry Sir, your bags were inadvertently offloaded at Atlanta, we will get them to you tomorrow'. I think an email to AMTRAK when I get home may be in order.
Anyway, we were 'lucky' enough to get one bag each delivered, so we have clothes to wear tomorrow when we go out and discover New Orleans. Until then...
Early 6am rise at Boston for a 7am taxi ride to the station for our trip to New York and on to New Orleans. Today would be a ‘short’ 4 hour trip to New York’s Penn Station in coach on a regional train before changing trains onto ‘The Crescent’, a Viewliner sleeper which travels between New York and New Orleans.
A seamless checkout saw us arrive at South Station Boston just after 7am. The taxi driver unloaded our bags onto the sidewalk as Diane went in search of a ‘red cap’. I stood guard over the bags in typical freezing weather, commuters pouring out of the station on their way to their city office well rugged up, almost of all of them sporting beanies on head and coffees in hand. The red cap arrived, loaded our bags onto a manual trolley and wheeled inside. When he found out we were going to New Orleans on a sleeper, he took us straight to the first class lounge where we had complimentary juice, coffee and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I snuck outside for a short look around and grabbed a few quick pics of the station...
We stayed in the warmth of the lounge until he came and grabbed us for pre boarding. Because we were travelling to New York on a regional train, we couldn’t check our bags thru to New Orleans unless we were happy to receive them a day late. This meant we had to take all our bags onto the train with us, but using the red cap made it easy. He had secured our luggage whilst we were in the lounge and when we left with him to go to the platform, it was just us and other people who were using red caps allowed to board early. This gave us our choice of seats so the red cap took us down one car past the cafe car, loaded all our luggage onto the train for us and then suggested we sit on the left hand side because it is a better view. Thank you sir, here’s your tip.
I may go on about it, but this red cap thing is just a great service and complimentary, although it is one service I’m more than happy to ensure a good tip. In essence, we never touched our bags at any time from the time we left our room until the time we got to New York. The porter at the hotel in Boston collected our bags from the room. Loaded them onto the taxi, the taxi driver unloaded them, the red cap picked them up from the kerb and put them on the train, straight behind our seats. Too easy.
The trip to New York was more or less straight down the coast, leaving Massachusetts and travelling thru America’s smallest state, Rhode Island, before travelling thru Connecticut before arriving in New York City. The ocean, wealthy homes and countless marinas housing boats big and small are the main points of interest as we travel the Boston/NY corridor. As we got close to New York, after travelling thru the Bronx, the train crosses the East River over the Hells Gate Bridge. This bridge was completed in 1917 and allegedly was the model for a larger bridge of similar design familiar to all of us back home...
When we got to New York it was a bit of a shitfight to be honest. The platform where our carriage stopped was very narrow, I’m talking 2 people wide narrow!! With 90% of the people getting off (a few were travelling on to Washington on the same train) it became very congested and a slow disembark. We waited until last because we had a fair bit of luggage, but fortunately there was a red cap close by waiting to load a family onto the train. Diane grabbed him and after he finished loading his group, we were in business. He loaded our bags onto a trolley, we all went up an escalator together and headed for the check-in counter. The red cap found out we were travelling on a sleeper to New Orleans, so we just skipped the long line, he took the bags thru and checked us in himself. After he gave us our tags, he directed us to the ‘Acela Lounge’ where we were able to have a drink and relax and wait about 30 minutes to board. We originally had 2 hours between trains, but the regional ran about 30 minutes late and all the farting about on the platform and checking in ate into any time we had to make it worthwhile to step outside. I did manage a few shots of the escalator to Track 12 Penn Station and our waiting train...
We boarded ‘The Crescent’ and it left on time at 2:15pm. Immediately upon leaving Penn Station, the train travels thru a tunnel and you pop out into the state of New Jersey. I took a quick video of the sights from the train, but it wasn’t until I started to take that video that I realised just how fast we were moving. Here’s the vid...
We were fairly flying, running side by side with freeways with cars doing well over 100km/h and just leaving them for dead. I later found out why it seemed to be going so much faster than either of the other trains we had been on so far.
We were now travelling thru areas of mostly housing and factories, a far cry from the mile after mile of desert we encountered on our trip across from LA. That said, I was pretty amazed at just how many factories just appeared vacant or desolate. Every window broken and many just sitting there disused. It appeared from the train that only about 1 in 3 was functioning, but looks can be deceiving I guess and perhaps the street facade told a different story.
Our SCA on this trip is Michelle, a 31yo African American who resides in New Orleans. Before you ask how I know she is 31yo, I heard her telling another passenger who asked...lol. She is very accommodating and at this early stage looks like she is light years ahead of Bill. It remains to be seen if she can match Cindy.
We arrived in Washington about 20 minutes early at about 5:40pm and were due to leave at 6:30pm. It is here in Washington that they change locomotives from electric to diesel powered. It was at that point I realised why we were going much faster on this train than on the SC or the LSL. I wandered up to the station concourse to get a bottle of soda water, or ‘Club Soda’ as you have to say here or they have no idea what u are talking about. I had a few Campari and soda’s between NY and Washington, but the cafe car doesn’t stock many cans of club soda, only using it for mixers for the cash paying coach passengers. I managed to get one can off him, but I got the impression that it was a one off. I got back in plenty of time, even though Diane was panicking. We waited and at 6:30, nothing happened. After a while, Michelle came thru to tell us that one of the coach cars has mechanical problems and they were going to have to change it. To make it worse, it was in the middle of the coach config, so they had to move all the passengers out of the car, plus their luggage and relocate them temporarily whilst they found a new car from somewhere. We finally pulled out of Washington at 8:10pm, almost 2 hours late. We had 8pm dinner reservations, but they were thrown in turmoil because whilst cars are getting changed and the train shunted about, all the power goes out, thus the dining car had a large downtime as well. As we pulled away from Washington, I wandered down to see what the situation was like in the dining car. It was only about half full, so they told me to grab Diane and come down straight away. Before I went back, I had a quick #1 in our rooms communal dunny, but the flush wasn’t working properly. Yet another reason why these are a BAD idea...lol I saw Michelle in the dining car picking up some dinner for somebody in our car who wanted to eat in their room and told her about the toilet problem. She said she’d go fix it.
Diane had ribs and I had the steak, done rare. This was no problem as the hotplate had obviously not reached peak temperature as yet and it came out still mooing. Fortunately it’s just the way I like it so it was all good. Desert was a sensational Peanut Butter Pie...
The staff in the dining car appeared very inexperienced and a world away from the smooth talking, sharp attendants we had on the SC and the one and only dining car meal we had on the LSL. But in fairness, it was a tough set of circumstances they faced and things may improve by tomorrow, we’ll see. After dinner we both ‘visited’ the coach car, just to check that their restrooms were working OK. Fortunately they were.
When we returned to our room we were met by Michelle who told us she needed us to change rooms because the toilet problem in our room could not be fixed and she needed to run it past the conductor. We told her not to worry if they had to upgrade us to a bedroom or family room, we wouldn’t complain. Her laughter suggested that wasn’t going to happen...and it didn’t. We moved to another roomette and prepared for our one and only overnight stay on ‘The Crescent’. It will also be my last night in the clearly superior Viewliner top bunk, the next 2 trips are back to Superliners.
Today was another day I have been looking forward to, the day I tour Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.
Diane and I both slept a bit longer than we wanted, awaking well after 9am. We flung open the curtains to see what the weather was like and we both thought we were back at Big White. Snow was falling and falling heavily!! We eventually got our stuff together and headed down for brunch at a nice little bakery cafe adjacent to our hotel, Au Bon Pain.
From there we walked to the trolley car tour headquarters which is only a block from where we are staying in the Boston Park Plaza. We purchased trolley car tickets which lets you hop on and off at any of 18 designated stops around the city and surrounding suburban points of interest. I also purchased a Fenway Park Tour ticket at a discounted price. The trolley cars run every 15/20 minutes so there is about 5 of them on the road at one time for the 90 minute route.
By now the snow had stopped, but it was bitterly cold and the stiff breeze cut you in half. It was well in the negatives and you could tell. The trolley rolled up and we jumped on with zero other passengers. The driver was a large guy called Buck who never stopped narrating from the time we got on until the time we got off at Fenway. He surely must have no voice left at the end of each day.
The windows of the trolley car were very dirty, so the pics are not great in a lot of cases, but I managed to get a few decent shots, one of which was very early in our tour, the original Cheers Bar...
We joined the trolley at stop 6 of 18 and the Fenway Park stop was #12, so early in our loop. I took a squillion pics of Fenway and these are a few...
That is Diane in front of the bronze statues of some Red Sox legends. Diane did not do the tour, opting to spend the hour in a nearby cosy Starbucks. The tour started from the Red Sox Team Store. This is a merchandise shop for the Sox which is huge, selling everything you can imagine relating to all things baseball and Red Sox. I was going to get the bottom garment for Mark, my good mate from Melbourne and mad Red Sox fan, but I couldn't get them in XXL...
The tour itself was fantastic. The guide obviously knew every intimate aspect of all things Red Sox, but his spiel was well rehearsed, very humorous and very polished, right down to the constant digs and snipes at the Red Sox sworn arch enemies, the New York Yankees. Here are some of the pics I took from inside the ballpark, spanning around the field from left field stand to right field stand...
Here is the story of the famous 'Green Monster'. Fenway Park is not only the oldest field in the Major Leagues, it is the smallest. On top of that, it has a slightly offset shape and the left field fence is substantially closer than any other fence in major league ballparks. To counteract this, many years ago they built a high wall at the fenceline of left field and you needed to actually hit it over the wall to get a home run. If the ball bounces off the wall it is still 'in play' and the game goes on. In the early days the fence was covered in advertising slogans, but the players complained that with the 'busy' background, they were losing sight of the ball. So the owner cut the sponsors and painted the fence, originally a dark navy blue. Apparently it looked out of place as blue, so they developed a paint in conjunction with a leading paint manufacturer and named it Fen Green. According to the tour guide, the exact makeup of pigments to match Fen Green is a closely guarded secret and only the owner of the Red Sox and the head groundsman for Fenway Park are allowed to purchase the paint. I'd suggest there is a fair bit of licence in that explanation, but I'll run with it anyway.
Anyway, here are the pics of the Green Monster...
Finally, I took a video of the field from ground level seating in left field...
After the tour, which ran for about 75 minutes, Diane was waiting for me at the Team Store. We decided to have a quick coffee to warm up before jumping back and continuing the trolley ride. We had a coffee at Jerry Remy's, a nice big bar/restaurant adjacent to Fenway Park and owned by Jerry Remy, a former Red Sox player and legend.
We must have just missed a trolley as we had about a 20 minute wait to get back on the trolley. It was freezing at the unprotected trolley stop. Finally the trolley turned the corner and fortunately for us, it was our old friend Buck. We continued on the rest of the loop until we finally did the complete loop. A few pics taken on the second half of the trip...
Finally, just to drive home how cold it is here, even the dogs won't go bare footed...
We got back to the hotel to thaw out for an hour before heading off for a chinese meal. When we got there at 6:30, the place was packed and it was a 40-50 minute wait. We decided to wait because the food must be good. As it turns out, we were very close to the Theatre District and that made it peak time as people dined early before heading to a show. However, the food was good and quite reasonably priced.
We are currently bunkered down in our now warm hotel room. When we came in this afternoon, the aircon was pumping out cold air. We called reception and a maintenance man was up within a few minutes and fixed the problem. Apparently it needed resetting. Reasonably early night for us, need to be in a taxi by 7am to the station for the next leg of our trip.
Boston thoughts? We have not had nearly enough time here, only one day really. Lots to see and do if the trolley driver is anybody to go by, but he talks everything up to be good and I guess he would tell people that MtDruitt Westfields was a must see if he was running the same tour in Sydney. Diane and I have decided it would be a city we would like to spend a few days in, so in the years to come if we get back to this part of the world, a few days are on the agenda.
We arrive in New Orleans in 2 days from now, so I'll get two days worth of entries up then. Thanks to all who have left a comment. As you can tell, keeping this up to date is pretty time consuming, but it's a labor of love and I'm enjoying it, but it is nice to get comments so I know at least some people are reading.
Woke at about 8am after a pretty good nights sleep. The Viewliner’s top bunk is wayyy better than the Superliner. I can actually sit on the end of the bed with enough headroom to sit up and the extra width of the bed at the head and shoulders end makes a world of difference to comfort. The window is also good for those times you wake in the night where you can look out and see what’s going on. Surprisingly, the times I awoke during the night usually coincided with a stop. I guess the rocking and rolling of the train helps you to sleep but when it stops, the body reacts by waking up.
We took the ‘Journey to the Centre of the Train’ for breakfast. Fair dinkum, I thought we were never going to get there. Carriage after carriage of coach passengers all curled in weird and wonderful positions trying to get comfortable. I had the daily special which was spinach quiche with a side of pork sausage and Diane had scrambled eggs with a side of bacon. Juice and coffees were consumed as the train rolled into Buffalo. We returned to our room where Bill had just finished making up our room into day mode.
We had a lazy morning (sort of hard to do anything else...lol) reading, writing blogs and sightseeing from our room. We decided to either skip lunch altogether or get Bill to get us something when he goes up later. One thing I have learnt about AMTRAK so far is that there are a lot of people who prefer to eat in the privacy of their room than in the dining car. This requires the SCA to order and pickup the meal and deliver it back to the room. I guess it’s part of his job but an extra tip is expected I’d imagine.
Some of the scenery from today...
One of the numerous multi-lane highways you see whilst crossing America. How they managed to think 2 lanes either way was going to be OK for the M5 is beyond me..
The Viewliner. Note the top windows in the sleeping car which are for the upper bunk..
They like colourful housing in NY State and Massachusetts...
Many of the rivers are either fully or partially frozen. The second shot is not great, taken from the train at high speed and dodging pylons, but it was a pretty amazing sight. An ice breaker had travelled down the centre of the river breaking the ice into small chunks and creating a channel about 5 metres wide. At different times along this trail, the ice pack had fractured and you could see the cracks open up and reach all the way to the shore..
Late morning the Lead Service Attendant (LSA), the dining car boss, came around for lunch reservations. Diane and I looked at each other and to be honest, we both couldn’t be bothered taking the trip back again. She said she would let Bill know and if we wanted lunch to let him know and he could deliver it. That was the last we heard or saw of anybody for ages. Bill is rarely seen at all, unlike Cindy who was constantly making sure we were comfortable and had enough water or coffee etc. I knew it was inevitable we would have varying levels of service from our SCA’s, but Bill suffered badly in the giant shadow cast by Cindy. Another big difference between the crew on the Southwest Chief (SC) and this train, the Lake Shore Limited (LSL), is the amount of announcements and the lack of information provided over the intercoms on the LSL. During lunch and dinner on the SC, the LSA would come on every 15mins and invite passengers with an 11:45-12:00-12:15 etc reservation to make their way to the dining car. No such announcements whatsoever on the LSL. On the SC, the Lounge Car Attendant would make announcements about what was available in the Lounge Car after every couple of hours, plus advise when she was going to close and reopen for her employee meal break. I wouldn’t even know if the LSL has a Lounge Car as we heard nothing.
Bill, the invisible SCA, materialised at our door around 1pm and asked if we wanted lunch. Diane said we weren’t going to bother taking the walk and Bill said he knew because the LSA had informed him. So we both just ordered a sandwich and off he went. He returned 15 mins later with 2 meals nicely presented on AMTRAK plates. He then vaporised again until I had to crash tackle him as he made one of his infrequent walks down the corridor about 4pm to get him to take the plates away.
After the train was ‘split up’ at Albany and Train 48 made its own way to New York, I read on one of the brochures that there would be no dining car on the Albany/Boston run and a hot meal would be served in the Lounge Car for sleeper passengers. This was not communicated in any shape or form whatsoever. Diane commented that she wondered what happened to the LSA as she hadn’t come around for dinner reservation times and I told her that it looks like its dinner in the Lounge Car.
Another thing that troubled us was that at Albany a large group of 15/16yo kids got on the train, possibly as part of the long weekend getaway. After the train pulled out of Albany, a steady stream of this group, all girls, made their way thru the sleeping car to ‘have a look’. Now it sounds harmless enough I know, but it is strictly prohibited for all different reasons. If any one of these girls is on some sort of reconnaissance with a view to stealing valuables, they just had a blueprint. Wander down the sleepers, have a look to see who has a laptop or camera out and wait for them to pass back thru the coach car on their way to dinner. Bingo, they’ve got 30 minutes minimum to go thru your belongings.
Casper Bill stuck his head in the door about 6:15pm and told us dinner was being served in the Lounge Car for the few sleeper passengers that were left on board. I mentioned to Bill that we had a steady stream of young ‘visitors’ in the past hour. He looked at me and said ‘really?’ I told him we were uncomfortable going to dinner and leaving our belongings unattended in the room if it was open slather to have a wander thru the sleeper for all and sundry. He told me that it wasn’t acceptable and he would stop anybody entering the sleeper. A few minutes later we made our way to the Lounge Car which fortunately was closer. There were only 2 coach cars between us and the Lounge Car in the new configuration.
We were greeted and seated at the Lounge Car by none other than Bill. That’s right, Bill who was also back in Car 4820 protecting our belongings...wtf? The dinner was a choice of a beef hotpot and ravioli pasta, a far cry from the 6 or so quality choices in the main Dining Car. Fortunately the ravioli was nice so it wasn’t a complete shutout.
After dinner we made our way back to our room with all our belongings seemingly still there and waited to roll into Boston. After looking like we would be about an hour late, we made up a heap of time and arrived just after due time at 9:30. We grabbed a red cap who carted our luggage from the platform all the way out to the taxi rank and than loaded the bags into the taxi. Those guys are gold and for the few dollars you tip them, they are great value. The taxi delivered us to our hotel which at first glance seems really nice. I rang when we were a few hours out of Boston as it looked like we would be checking in late at around 11pm, I didn't want them to think we weren't coming. When we checked in, we were told we had been upgraded to a deluxe King. Thank you sir!!
A nice hot shower was needed and we are currently ready for bed, being just after midnight here in Boston. Tomorrow we will do a city tour, hopefully it's not too crowded as it is a Public Holiday here in the USA. The one thing I want to see is Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. They have ballpark tours and that is what I'm aiming for.
