2 Seats on a Train!

When I was planning my trip I made a conscious decision that I wanted to travel a lot of the US by train. I'd journeyed around Europe the same way and enjoyed the mode of transport. Being able to sit by the window and watch the world pass on by, taking in what was around and able to get up and stretch the legs or grab a bite to eat whenever the will took me. Amtrak, Americas rail network had already presented some problems in that its actually a pretty limited service. Basically, it doesn't actually go to that many places and the ones it does go to you might be quicker walking.

Still, there were a good few parts of the route that would allow me to travel by train. I'd ventured from New York to Boston quite comfortably and quickly and was now about to embark on the 2nd such trip. This time, the much longer stretch from Boston to Chicago.

I had worked out prices before hand, using the Amtrak website to gauge how much my transport costs were going to be. What I failed to take into account is that the ticket price doubles (or there abouts) if buying your ticket a day or 2 in advance. So here I was, some $150 lighter and thinking it would have been cheaper to fly!

The thing with buying a seat on the train, especially going overnight, is that you buy one and pray you get two. You watch as the seats fill up, hoping the doors will close before someone asks those magic words "Is this seat taken?" and plonks themselves (and often their oversized, overly sweaty body) down next to you.

With no direct train to Chicago, the first leg was to Albany, New York State's Capital. O n my way to the station I had bumped into, yep, you guessed it, the 3 Scots, only this time they weren't heading to Chicago but dd have the change at Albany as well. As we boarded though we got split up and I was on my own, travelling to Albany with 2 seats to myself!

I wasn't so fortunate for the 2nd part of my journey. Just as the doors closed, two figures emerged into my cabin and with just a couple of seats left one of them dropped down into my spare seat. Damn it! As it turned out though they were both from Preston and doing similar to me although their primary aim was to get to New Zealand to go snowboarding. They were stopping off in Buffalo to go see Niagara Falls (I had made the decision to skip it as I wanted to spend more time elsewhere and the train scheduling meant it would be nearly a 4 day affair to spend a day at the falls). Part of me ,of course, wished I had decided to do it but I feel you have to be content with what you do as the trip will be full of incidents like this.

We sat, chatted, shared a few beers together before they departed the train around midnight and I seized the opportunity to spread out and act asleep before actually falling asleep!

I awoke at 7.30am, just 30 minutes before arriving in Chicago!