We took two limos to New York Penn Station for the 5 of us. The limos arrived at 5:30am as scheduled. The trip to NY Penn Station was only 50 minutes long. Shirley forgot her glasses at home. We arrived almost an hour before the train departure time. We had to get our passports inspected before boarding the train. We could not find cheap plastic replacement glasses for Shirley in the drug store at the station. They carry only reading glasses with a positive number, whereas Shirley needed a negative number.
The train departed at 7:19 am, which is 4 minutes late. The view of the Hudson from the left side of the train was amazing. However, the train started to accumulate delays. At one point the train just stopped to allow a freight train to pass. The conductor said that they want to keep the train safe and upright. The train shook violently when it was traveling at any speed. We eventually arrived to the Canadian border with a 1.5 hour delay, which increased to a 2 hour and 15 minutes delay when we arrived to Toronto. We arrived to Toronto at 10pm instead of 7:46pm. The comparison with Japanese trains was not flattering (at all) to Amtrak. The lady who was sitting on the other side of the aisle said that even the trains in India have shorter delays!
One mistake I did before the ride was to staple the tickets together. I got 10 tickets: 5 tickets from New York to the Canadian border, and 5 tickets from the Canadian border to Toronto. I stapled the pair of tickets of a single person together, and then I stapled the 5 pairs together. The conductor took the first 5 tickets, which means that he took 3 New York to Canadian border tickets, and 2 Canadian border to Toronto tickets. I did not understand how he could tear the 5 interleaved tickets in one motion, but I did not notice his mistake until we already crossed the border to Canada. I explained to the cheerful Canadian conductor that the American conductor took the wrong tickets. I was afraid that he would cause us much grief, but he just accepted my explanation and got his superior's approval.
We got two connected suites at the Cambridge Suites Hotel in Toronto, which were very spacious.
Lesson learnt: do not staple two kinds of tickets together to avoid confusion. Staple only identical tickets together (to the same destination).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment