Tag Archives: Connecticut

A thankful traveler

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, and out in the blogosphere, travel bloggers are asking what we have to be thanksful for when it comes to travel. In my case, the list is long.

I’m thankful for having had the chance to see Venice before it sinks into the lagoon on which it was built. For having walked the streets of some of the world’s great cities — New York, London, Paris, Mexico City, Tokyo. For seeing Hawaiian waterfalls so tall that you could fly a helicopter beneath them.

I’m going to give thanks that I’ve been able to set foot at least once in my life on every continent except Africa, Australia and Antarctica. For having seen snow-capped mountains, lush rainforests and flat, scorching deserts. For having had the chance to see as an adult a few of the places I dreamed of as a child.

I’m thankful for having had the chance to share rides, flights and meals with people who could communicate with me only through their smiles and their kindness — and in doing so, spoke volumes.

I’m thankful for old friends in California and Connecticut with whom I’ve shared journeys to other parts of the world, and new ones in Chicago and Canada and Paris and Senegal.

For the daughter of the Japan Air Lines pilot who taught me how to use chopsticks and the young Czech journalist who taught me how to travel with an open heart.

For my Mexican colleagues who taught me the meaning of friendship and in doing so, became my sisters and brothers.

Most of all, I’m thankful for Melrose Elementary School in Oakland, CA.

We’d just moved to Oakland from New Orleans and its racially segregated school system. I went from classrooms where everyone, including the teacher, looked like me, to one in which everyone else looked like…well…everyone else, from everywhere else.

Blacks, whites, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos. The whole world, it seemed, was in my classroom, a United Nations in pencil, chalk and crayons.

I loved it.

It made me want to know more about a world that could produce so many different kinds of equally fascinating, incredible people.

And I’m really thankful for that.

Happy Thanksgiving. See you after the turkey.

Coast-to-Coast on Amtrak

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Our newest guest columnist looks back over his most recent cross-country rail trip, and lays down some solid advice.

By WALT BARANGER
It took three trains and about 63 hours, but I made it to Connecticut from Los Angeles by rail. What a terrific way to span the continent.

As you can see from my somewhat disjointed  Quicktime video, there’s quite a variety of scenery. The brown tinge on some shots comes from the brown-tinted windows that are used on all Amtrak cars.

Amtrak gets high marks for meals. The signature steak is usually a safe bet, as is the vegetarian pasta (the recipe for which I obtained from Amtrak’s chef). Breakfast is highlighted by a generous portion of French toast and properly prepared grits that lack the dreadful gummy consistency of most hotel grits. The scrambled eggs are apparently cooked in a square mold, and the breakfast quesadilla lacked queso (cheese). Some trains, such as the Washington Limited, serve brunch. All meals are included with sleeping car accommodations.

The diner uses communal seating, so unless you are a party of four, you’ll be sitting with at least one stranger.

Freight railroads own most of the tracks used by Amtrak. The BNSF track between Los Angeles and Chicago was smooth and consistent, but the CSX track between Chicago and Washington was only a small cut above Indian Railways between New Delhi and Mumbai; at one point I was thrown off my feet. Washington, D.C., to Connecticut is smooth, too, except for the Hell’s Gate Bridge over the East River in New York City. Spectacular view of Manhattan, but a very rough ride.

For $600 including meals and roomette, the trip was a bargain and compares favorably with hotels. Next time, I’ll schedule a layover for a day or two in Chicago (Union Station is adjacent to the downtown Loop) and I might also suggest a layover in New Mexico.

Booking a roomette is the cheapest way to get a sleeper compartment, but roomette passengers use communal showers and toilets. That’s fine for me, but my wife prefers a more spacious bedroom with a private toilet/shower stall.

Walt’s Secrets
If traveling between Chicago and New York, the direct Lake Shore Limited is more expensive than traveling via Washington and changing trains to New York. The two routes take roughly the same amount of time, but roomettes and bedrooms can be much cheaper via Washington — $200 or more each way. Simply an issue of supply and demand.

Never book Bedroom A. It’s smaller than the others, and the price is the same.

Never book Roomette 2. It’s directly opposite Roomette 1, where the car attendant lives. You’ll hear noises at all hours of the day and night. Roomette 4 is perfect: near the bathroom, not too close to the car attendant but close enough to give a shout, and close to the stairs that lead downstairs to the exit.

On some trains, the crew car — a sleeper where the train crew lives — will have spare roomettes for passengers. This can be good or bad: Bad because it’s the first (or last) car of the train and is the farthest from the diner. Good because the communal toilet/showers are virtually unused during the day and there is very little foot traffic through the car.

Book early. Amtrak has a generous refund policy, but sleepers sell out many weeks or months in advance and Amtrak has no spare cars to add in case of a sellout. Six months in advance for summer travel is not too early.

Walt on the Southwest Chief

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By WALT BARANGER

SOMEWHERE EAST OF LOS ANGELES — I’ve been trying to coax Greg onto a long-distance Amtrak train, but in the meantime, I’m heading back to Connecticut from Los Angeles by train.

Just sick of air travel.

A roomette — all meal included — is $601 with the AAA discount and advance purchase. When I figured in the cost of the flight home, the extra night in a hotel to get a flight to the East Coast and the meals, the marginal cost of the trip drops to around $250 or $300.

I’m on day two of a four-day route: L.A. – Chicago – Washington – Connecticut.

I’ve already caught some steam-train action and woke up yesterday to snow in New Mexico.

Today we’re just approaching Kansas City (Missouri or Kansas, take your pick) and breakfasted on grits, a decent veggie omelet and cranberry juice. Amtrak’s food ain’t what it was 20 years ago!

More as we approach Chicago this afternoon…

WASHINGTON DC — Outbound

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Random thoughts from Gate C

Thomas Circle, Washington DC

Whenever I come here, I’m sad to leave. I love this town. I’d love it even if I’d never been a journalist (ultimate seat of ultimate power, always something to dig into, an endless stream of knowledge and a bottomless pit of politics).

By design, one of the most European of American cities — elegant in its beauty, imposing in a regal sort of way, befitting a national capitol.

Beyond that, there’s something about being here that energizes my spirit. You know you’re in a place where you can make things happen, and you’re surrounded by people who — to put it bluntly — are about something.

From a journalist’s viewpoint, DC, New York and San Francisco share the same characteristic. Great town to work in, but you can’t afford to live here. Just as Manhattan professionals tend to live in one of the other boroughs, on Long Island or in Connecticut, so much of Washington’s professional corps heads for Virginia or Maryland suburbs at day’s end.

Summers can be brutally hot and humid, and winter can bury the place under a mantle of snow, as it did only a few weeks ago. But on a crisp, clear winter morning when the sky is cloudless and stands as a crystal background against the bare trees and a skyline dotted with monuments and historic buildings, DC is almost unbearably beautiful.

As it was this morning on the way back to Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

It helps, of course, that the notorious capitol traffic is taking the weekend off.

The drive back up I-295 to Baltimore is like driving through a park, two lanes each way, lined with trees and crossed by the occasional stream. It will remind San Diegans of the stretch of state Route 163 that runs through Balboa Park — except that here, it’s closer to 40 miles long.

It’ll also harken back to the days when gasoline was cheap enough to let you take drives like this for fun (and yes, I am old enough to remember that).

You get the feeling that most folks are on a mission of some sort when they come here. At times, it looks as if almost every male beyond puberty is wearing the same winter uniform — black suit, white shirt, black shoes, black overcoat. The fashion rebels out there will go with the khaki trenchcoat.

And they all walk at the same, fast, purposeful clip, as if they’re late for a meeting with some important, powerful person.

Or maybe they’re just trying to get out of the cold, who knows?

I wonder sometimes if they’ve been here so long that they’re just inured to the beauty that they’re so rapidly striding through.

It was that kind of trip for me this time. Every day was a buzzsaw — meetings, interviews, decipher the scribbled notes, post on the blog, collapse in a steaming heap across the bed at the end of the day. When you spend three days someplace and never once turn on the TV in your room, you’re not in a city.

You’re in a blender.

That’s the way it is when you’re locked-on-task in one of the world’s high-octane cities. It makes you wish you could slow down, see more of your friends who now call DC home, drink in the beauty and history of this place.

Then you remember: You do have the option of coming back.