Spring Break 2018 Part I - Getting There is Half the Fun!

First, let me just say this: as much as I love to travel, I absolutely HATE air travel during Spring Break (or Christmas).  The crowds (oh, the crowds), the delays, the over-worked-and-underpaid-and-therefore-decidedly-snarky airline (and airport) employees, and the RIDICULOUS airfares.  Try as I might, I just CAN’T stomach $900 a ticket to fly to Tampa, especially when a week later that same flight is less than half. 

The other factor working against us, in 2018 in particular, is the placement of Easter on April 1.  Maybe you didn’t know this, but here in the U.S., public schools located in the Midwest and the West generally have Spring Break over the last week of March (this does not include universities, whose Spring Breaks are typically earlier in March…to our great relief), whereas schools on the East Coast and in the South, as well as all parochial schools, align their Spring Break with Easter.  Well, in 2018, that all happens in the SAME WEEK, so it’s really like the perfect storm of Spring Break craziness…and expense.

Why am I explaining all of this?  Number one- for those of you who called me over the past couple months thinking you could score a great last-minute Spring Break deal and were sorely disappointed, this is why.  Number two- not willing to be a part of the perfect storm madness provided the impetus for my family to figure out some kind of alternative experience that minimized the use of airports and planes.  Enter Amtrak.  Yes, you read that right: AMTRAK.

Chances are you’ve never been on an Amtrak train- I’m 44 and live within 8 miles of Amtrak’s biggest national hub, and I had NEVER ridden one.  The trains always seemed kind of dingy and run-down from the outside, and from the looks of things on any given day in Union Station, not always full of the most savory-looking characters (except for the Amish).  However, I also know that train travel has recently taken off again as a sort of vintage-style vacation, so we checked our preconceived notions at the door, crossed our fingers, and hoped that we could embrace this supposed “Renaissance of the Rails”.  But, if we were going to do this, it was going to be ONCE, and it was going to be RIGHT.  That meant full connecting sleeper cars with en suite facilities.  That also meant, like most good travel these days, planning way ahead of time to secure these cabins (we booked at the end of last July).

So, on Friday afternoon, our neighbor drove us to the Metra station, where we lugged our bags onto the commuter train for the 25 minute ride into Chicago.  We checked our bags in the Metropolitan Lounge (another nice perk for choosing the superior sleeper service). We grabbed a delicious dinner at Cochon Volant (see my December blog entry for more on this place), and at 8:30pm began our southbound trek aboard the Amtrak City of New Orleans.  The connecting sleeper cars were comfortable and clean, if maybe a bit dated.  The passengers in sleeper cars were completely separated from those sitting in coach, so from a security perspective, it’s not like you had random people passing through- just other sleeper passengers, the overwhelming majority of which were just other families like us trying something different for Spring Break.  Our cabin steward was very attentive, and the kids got a kick out of watching him convert the benches to beds and lowering the upper berths.  All in all a very comfortable night’s sleep….until we pulled into Memphis at 6am, stopped with a lurch, and woke the kids up for good.  I was expecting the dining car to look like that scene in White Christmas with white linen table cloths and a bar where a happy barman makes milkshakes for everyone- you know, where they sing about the snow?  Not so much.  More like Mel’s Diner than anything else, but the food was palatable enough- better than airplane food (I know, low bar)

If getting there is part of the fun, this was definitely fun.  Do I need to do it again?  Nah.  But if you’ve never traveled by train, or if you’re like me, and the only memory of train travel is a super-loud overnight slice of hell from Milan to Paris in your mid-20s, Amtrak is worth the time and effort….if only to replace said slice-of-hell memory.  Best of all, just like the European trains, it lets you off right in the city center- no airport transfer necessary.  Hello, Big Easy!  (just where you want to be with your kids…..)

Riding on the City of new orleans- good morning, America! How are you?