Amtrak Trains - a cruise on land beats flying

Planning
Over Christmas, we went from Dallas, Texas (Union Station) to Austin, Texas, via train. We have grown tired of the hassle of flight security, and since we were just going overnight, we felt that if we drove, most of our time would be spent driving in stop and go traffic, which is annoying for at least one person in the car. So, I went to the Amtrak website and looked at the schedule. Unfortunately, because the run from Chicago to San Antonio is not well-travelled, there is only one train going each direction per day, so you don't get a lot of choice on schedule. I hear that other parts of the country are better.

Cost
The price of the trip was only $90 for the four of us each way, which seemed like a great value. In fact, it was so good that I looked for other options that I could now afford to make it a more pleasant trip. Each train consists of about six cars. There is a dining car with full service, a snack car with booth tables, an engine, a crew car, a couple of coach-seating cars, and a sleeper car, along with a lounge car.

Dining car
Dining is easy on a train; there are no seat-belt lights so you can just make an appointment for the dining car or go into the snack bar anytime. In the dining car, you are seated by a hostess and your order is taken and brought to your table. It is a fairly limited menu, but the food is decent. If you're staying in a sleeper room, the meals are included, so that makes it a no-brainer to do the sleeper if you're going to be on the train for any length of time.

Lounge car
Most cars on the train are two stories. The Lounge car is one big room with individual seats and huge picture windows. The seats face diagonally toward the windows, so you can sight-see with your friends and still chat with them. The route taken by the train from Dallas to Austin is not the same old route you've seen from I-35. Travelling by train takes you out into the boondocks for some interesting terrain.

Sleeper cars
The sleeper cars have a variety of rooms, depending on what train you are on. We had two two-person roomettes, which consist of two seats that can be folded into two beds, one bed above the other. There was a slightly bigger room available too, but it wouldn't accomodate two adults and two teens, only smaller children would have worked out. Each sleeper was a $40 upgrade, but well worth it since meals are included. Coach seating isn't bad, though; it's like a first-class seat on an airplane.

Cell Service
Since I write about cell phones a bit, I feel I should report on the usability on the train. Amtrak claims that you can get service along most lines, which makes sense because they kind of parallel major highways, at least close enough to get service. I never had trouble getting service anywhere along the line, and unlike planes you are not made to turn off your phone ever. Secondly, if you get games for your phone, you can play those on your phone too, as you will probably have some time on your hands.

Time
A lot of people don't take the train because they are concerned how long it takes to get there. This is definitely one of those journey-not-the-destination situations. Even though it was 6-7 hours each direction, we all felt that it wasn't long enough and want to do it again. It's not just 6 hours chained to a seat, you can walk around the cabin, eat, play board games, and so on, and no one has to drive. They'll even rent you a media device if you want. If you've never done it before, I highly recommend it.

Security
Overall, a train is fairly secure just by itself. It is rare anymore that someone will ride down a train on horseback and loot the vault. It would be hard to hijack a train to make it go somewhere else, too. We purchased tickets online, then showed our ID at the train station and got tickets. The conductor showed us to our rooms without eve looking at our tickets; he already knew which rooms were booked. We stowed our luggage downstairs from the room on a luggage rack, and had the run of the place after that. We could still get to our luggage during the trip. I think it will be obvious to frequent fliers how much less of a hassle all this was.

Orlando

Tourism
This week I am in Orlando. One thing I want to say right off the bat is that there is more to Orlando than Disney. As a matter of fact, one of the best tourist experiences I have ever had is now Discovery Cove. This park is part of the same group as Busch Gardens, which has a park in Tampa Bay, about an hour and a half from Orlando. This group also owns Sea World, which has a resort just down the street from Discovery Cove. The thing that sets Discovery Cove apart from Sea World or any other mere theme park is that it is a very hands-on experience. They limit admission to the park, and when you check in, you will barely have spoken your name before they have all of your reservation information pulled up. You are issued a photo tag that gets you access to all parts of the park, along with all food and drink for the day. This being owned by Anheuser Busch, that includes beer and assorted other alcoholic beverages. Get there early, and take advantage of the included breakfast and coffee.

Discovery Cove
The park is relatively small, but with the small number of tourists allowed in, you will feel like the place is deserted most of the time. They keep it to 1000 guests a day, but on the day we went it seemed more like 300. Like Sea World, this park offers a variety of sea life to explore, as well as a decent-sized aviary with many hungry tropical birds to interact with. The bird food is included, so you never feel like you are being nickel and dimed to death. Visit the aviary first, so you don't have to get in the cold water yet, and the birds are still hungry. They will swoop down and eat while perched on your arm. There are toucans, parrots, kookaburras, and all sorts of birds I'd never heard of.

Snorkelling/swimming is the main attraction at this park, including a dolphin swim. Essentially, you spend the day killing time waiting for your dolphin swim to come up, but there is plenty to do while you are there. When you first arrive (no pressure, after breakfast) you are issued a diving mask and a snorkel, which you get to keep. It is a technically excellent snorkel; it has a one-way valve on the bottom to release trapped water from the pipe. You are also issued a wetsuit for the day, which can be long, short, or just a vest. During your free time, you can snorkel in two main areas, apart from the dolphin pools. One is the tropical river, the other is the sealife snorkel area called the coral reef. Even with all the swimming, this is still a perfectly good destination in the winter. Most of the water is heated, and the Dolphin and coral reef water is not that cold, especially in a wetsuit. This is not the arctic water of beluga whales or killer whales.

The tropical river is a sort of artifical freshwater river that loops throughout the park, made to look natural with a rocky riverbed and sunken artifacts throughout. However, it is at least eighty degrees and probably lightly chlorinated, so it is a fine place to spend most of your time if it is a little chilly out. The river isn't totally devoid of life, though. It loops through the aviary, and the birds are kept in by way of two waterfalls at each end. On another part of the river is a wider area with a white-sand beach and lounge chairs. Of course snack bars are nearby to keep up the flow of free food and beer.

Once you get tired of swimming in circles, there is a coral reef with some more cool ideas. First, it is salt water lagoon kept at normal tropical temperatures, and stocked with all kinds of tropical life, including gigantic stingrays. Swimming next to a herd of those, after the Steve Irwin incident, was quite the added adventure. Several of these rays had no less than a six foot wingspan, and it is really cool to watch them swim right beside you. There are all sorts of tropical fish, including barracudas and sharks. At first, it seems like they are all in the same pool you are swimming in, for an even greater thrill. There is a kind of permanent sunken ship with holes in it, and that is where you view the more ferocious sealife. But when you reach your hand through the hole, it appears that the glass wall you thought must be there keeping back the sharks is missing. It's an interesting, pool-clearing kind of effect.

Dolphin Swim
Soon the time arrives to swim with the dolphins. You get in the water with a small group, and your group is assigned a trainer and a dolphin. At first, this seems a little weird, because you don't have the one-on-one experience, but the groups are kept below ten, and the overall experience is not bad with that many people. At the end, you each get to individually be towed in by the dolphin, and that was a really weird, different, unique experience. Believe it or not, you can pretty much spend the entire day at this resort, and you will be entertained the whole time. A lot of the time is self-directed and really low key, so you should bring a book to read by the beach and expect to spend more time relaxing than you ever would at some place like Disney.

Amenities
Included in the price of admission is a seven-day pass to either Sea World or Busch Gardens. For an extra $30, you can go to both places. This would be a trip all in itself normally, but even if your are coming to Orlando to do the Disney thing, I would still recommend Discovery Cove as a relaxing day in the middle of your week to not spend the whole day walking around and stressing about fast pass ride times.

French

When I was in High School, I took a couple of years of French class. I remembered enough to ask where the train station was: Où est la gare? The problem is, what is the pat phrase that they will respond with? There isn't one. The response will be the French equivalent of "well, you go down by the post office and turn left. But don't turn before the post office, you know, after the post office. Then there is a one-way street, which you want to be on, but you'll be going the other way. So you have to go one street over...." You get the idea. So it was pretty much worthless. Just the same, I signed up for French in college too, because a foreign language was required.

In 1990, I actually went to France. Everyone says the French are rude, and will not let you speak French with them but will instead try to switch to English. Furthermore, "everyone in France speaks English." This is true to the exact same extent that it is true in Texas. "Everyone" speaks Spanish. And if a person from Mexico comes up to one of them and says, "Where to is the ESTACIÓN DE TREN?" they are likely to be answered in Spanish. If that Texan doesn't speak Spanish, the Mexican will get blank stares. How rude.

Anyway, in February of 1990, the English channel, which you may know also borders France, experienced some of the strongest winds in over fifty years. Boat service was shut down, news reports were filed, things blew over, and so on. As we were walking by the channel, we were being blown like crazy, almost being lifted off our feet. Finally, we turned a corner and the wind was blocked by a building. However, there was another couple walking in the opposite direction from us, toward the channel, blithely walking a standard poodle. We tried to warn them, but right there was that French rudeness again. As they rounded the corner, the dog was lifted off his feet and he flew through the air until he sproinged out to the end of the leash, rather like a cartoon. Outside of a cartoon, I'd never seen anything like it.

But that is not the story I came to tell. About six or seven years later, at a work party, the subject of international travel came up. Luckily, I had that old standby about the poodle all queued up and ready to go. I started in with the obligatory apology, "Oh, yes, we've been to France."
My co-worker echoed back, "Yes, I've been there too."
I don't think he realized this was a monologue. "When we were there, they had record winds on the English channel."
He started in again. "No, we had record winds. On the channel. Strongest in fifty years."
This threw me for a loop, but I plodded on. "I think it was about February of 1990."
Once more. "Yes, this was February. Let me think. Oh yes, it would have been about 1990."
At this point I knew I had lost, so I dropped any pretense of telling a story and began that long wait between my own stories when I have to listen to someone else's.
He continued. "As a matter of fact, the wind was so strong, we were walking along in the wind, and finally found shelter as we turned a corner. However, there was this other couple walking a dog..."
Yes, he proceeded to tell MY story. I was so flabbergasted that I couldn't continue, or even make note of the fantastic coincidence that two people working for the same company would have the exact same experience at almost the same time. They could have been on the same boardwalk as us. I spent the rest of the party in a daze, and as it turned out I later left that company without ever resolving that strange incident, so there's someone else out there with the same story as me, but without the punchline.

Looking back, I now realize that I probably had already told him that story once, and he had simply repeated it back to me later as if it was his own. What a great thing to do to someone who starts repeating themselves and retelling the same story. Of course, I would never do that; I'm not that old. Now you kids get off my lawn.