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November 23, 2004

Cascades Service

I've completed the train part of my trip. I've travelled on the Starlight Express from San Francisco to Eugene, and from there on the Cascades to Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. I'm pretty impressed.

The Starlight Express starts off in Southern California and goes right up the coast. It is a slow, lumbering train, that often gains a lot of delays on the way up. LVH and AB both warned me that it would likely be late and just get later. But the train left Emmeryville just about 10 mins late and, almost 15 hours later, arrived in Eugene.

Yeah, 15 hours is a long time to be sitting in a seat. But that's just one of the great things when you compare Amtrak to flying. For one thing, you don't have to sit in your seat: you can get up, walk around, go to the dining car or the lounge. The views are spectacular, even in the fog. Your seat mates are sometimes a fun bunch, and sometimes just crazy. Oh, and there's no long security lines or annoyances that make flying a pain in the ass.

Here's a shocker for those used to dealing with Amtrak's NE Corridor and big city staff: the staff on the west coast are just amazingly nice people. They were all helpful, even to the annoying people on the Starlight Express.

There's decent food at not too high a price, the seats are comfortable, and did I mention that there are no body cavity searches? If time is on your side, what's there not to love?

Posted by Samer at November 23, 2004 07:12 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Emily at November 24, 2004 01:40 PM

Posted by: Samer at November 24, 2004 01:57 PM