I am back from Seattle. I had a wonderful time. Jen was a fantastic hostess. I took some photos. I wrote many pages in my diary. It was the perfect transitional mini-vacation.
Except for the train.
You see, I have this tendency to romanticize things, not everything, mind you, but quite a few things, and I’ve learned not to do it too much with people these days but I still do it with concepts, like, let’s say, a trip up the coast on a train.
In my diary, I decided to illuminate my train travel tips for everyone:
I was mostly disappointed that Amtrak is so crappy now, compared to the Amtrak of my younger days, when I used to take it several times a year between the Midwest and the East Coast. It was rarely late, and if it was, it was a matter of minutes, not hours. On the way to Seattle, we were delayed 9 hours in total; on the way back, 5.
There were bright spots. There were the three guys from Taiwan I had lunch with on the way to Seattle who, when we exchanged email addresses, would write their names on a piece of paper they then headed with “Guys From Taiwan”. There were the three older women from Indianapolis I had dinner with on the way back who called each other horrible, wonderful names and cackled with laughter so that the rest of the dining-car passengers turned around to stare at us. There was the scenery, miles and hours of it, and the low chunk-chunk of the train on its borrowed tracks.
However the train was, Seattle did not disappoint. I’m glad I had enough time to catch up with Jen yet still strike out on my own. I got to see the Japanese gardens and a few branches of the public library and Pike Place Market and I had dinner with Stephanie and Jodawi. And I was only a little bad; a Visconti Van Gogh Midi fountain pen just happened to come home with me. hee!
So though I’ll go back to Seattle in a heartbeat, I won’t be taking the train. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go freak out about my first day of my new job, which is tomorrow!