Getting Ready
Every late spring or summer we travel back to Cincinnati to see two of our kids, seven of our grandchildren and one great-grandson. This trip is usually by car (1850 miles taking a minimum of four days for us old folks) or by plane (always a major hassle with cattle car seating). This year we decided to take a train instead. This is the first time we've tried this, so I thought some of you might like to know how things go for us. This might inspire you to give it a try or to not even think about it if our experiences are bad!
Amtrak is the most convenient choice for us. We board a train in Flagstaff, AZ, at about 5:00 am, go to Chicago and then take another train to Cincinnati that arrives around 3:30 am, roughly two days after we start the trip. The cost is a little more than air travel since we decided to pay for a roomette on the longer legs of the trip, then travel by coach for the shorter part to and from our old home town. The roomette also includes meals and other nice perks.
We live in Prescott, AZ, about 90 miles from Flagstaff. To avoid a late-night drive, we elected to rent a room at the Hotel Monte Vista the night before the trip. The hotel is about two blocks from the Amtrak terminal. Since we drove there, Amtrak provides 15-day free parking, but you must be out of the lot before the deadline or your car will be towed! If this is similar to other terminals, it looks like you might want to find another way to get started, especially if your trip is longer than 15 days. In our case we will complete our journey on the fifteenth day.
You can buy your tickets online, but I decided to talk to a human being, especially since this is a new adventure for me and my wife. "Julie" is Amtrak's virtual agent, but if you say "agent" during her spiel and then follow it with "none of those" when she tries to give you more choices, you'll get to very courteous human agents. I explained what we wanted and was given help in determining what was best for us. I would suggest that you plan a train trip early and order tickets well ahead of your trip, especially if you want a roomette or bedroom suite. The prices go up as the sleeper cars fill up. In our case we paid about $300 for the trip from Flagstaff to Chicago but paid about $500 for the roomette on our way back. The roomettes don't have toilets or showers in them, but there seem to be adequate facilities in each sleeping car. The bedroom suites are about double the cost of roomettes, and one friend told us that you can sit on the toilet and take a shower at the same time in those suite restrooms!
We can check up to two bags each and can carry two bags onto the train, but we decided to forgo the baggage checking and just carry all of our stuff in one piece of luggage for each of us.
We travel to Flagstaff tomorrow afternoon and board the train Friday morning. I'll collect my experiences on the trip and write some more blogs. I'm excited about this new adventure!
No comments:
Post a Comment