Our cruise adventures began with a train ride from Sacramento to Los Angeles. Awaking at 3:30AM, we got ready to leave our humble abode and head for Nick’s parents’ house where we would drop off our truck and bum a ride to the train station from Nick’s mom. The Coast Starlight was set to depart at 6:30AM. There is nothing quite like getting up that early on your first official day of vacation and then following it up with a 14 hour train ride. I should preface the rest of the story by saying that the thought process behind taking the train was that we were on vacation and a train ride would be relaxing. We could both relax, read, and enjoy the scenery.
When we arrived at Amtrak, we headed out to the platform and situated ourselves in front of the first big train that we saw… which was also the only train that we saw. Surely, this had to be the Coast Starlight? As our departure time grew nearer we began to doubt ourselves as we heard people around us shouting out their destinations and this particular train was still not boarding. Nick decided to ask the nearest friendly Amtrak associate and it was a good thing. Our train was behind the train that we had been standing in front of for so long. We made our way to the Coast Starlight and found our seats.
I have to admit, the ride was somewhat relaxing for the first few hours. In fact, the first 4 seemed to fly by. Then we realized we were only in San Jose and that we were hungry. This was problematic because 1) it only takes 2 hours to drive to San Jose and 2) there are not many tantalizing food choices on trains. Oh, and I should mention 3) I get grumpy when I am hungry. We solved this dilemma by eating breakfast in the dining car. Nick had french toast and I only nibbled on bacon thanks to traveler’s anxiety. We later had a cup-o-noodles at the café. The word café makes this seem cozy, but don’t be mistaken. The café was an area with snacks, drinks, and a microwave… and frozen food… to be microwaved. I will come back to this later.
After what seemed like an eternity we arrived in San Luis Obispo. This is perhaps the only stop that I was looking forward to. I love SLO and I knew that Pismo Beach (where we got married almost a year earlier) was right around the corner. This was one of the longer stops, so we got out of the train in search for edible food. Much to our dismay, there was none to be found. We hopped back on the train and ordered 2 delicious microwave pizzas and waited for the train to get on its merry way. And waited. And waited. And waited. It turns out that the train a few miles in front of us had broken down and would have to reverse its way back to SLO. Or at least this is what we think happened. We never heard anything official out of the mouths of Amtrak, so I might be making this whole thing up.
After our 2 hour layover in SLO we cruised on down the coast and passed Pismo Beach in the blink of an eye. I have to admit that Santa Barbara was gorgeous, so the scenery scored half a bonus point bumping the overall trip on a scale of 1 to 10 from a -5 after the whole SLO thing to a -4.5. But this trip wasn’t over yet. We still had to get to Union Station.
We ended up making up the time wasted in SLO and getting to Los Angeles only a half-hour behind schedule. In total, this trip took 14.5 hours rather than 14 hours. 14 hours sounds long and it is long. It is even longer than it sounds. Don’t ever do this. No matter how leisurely you are feeling. A 14 hour train ride is not worth it. I am warning you. Don’t’ do it.
But again, our trip was not over yet. Now we had to get from Union Station to Long Beach and this is where things really started getting ugly.
No comments:
Post a Comment