Back in January, Amtrak had a sale on their US Rail Passes. Instead of the usual $500, you could pay $300 for any ten Amtrak rides within a month. It seemed like too good of a deal to pass up, so Michael and I bought passes. They were fully refundable, and we had 120 days to use them, so we figured there was no harm in buying them and then changing our minds. But of course, as the window of time for us to use the passes narrowed, I started scribbling more and more furiously in my notebook until I had a full itinerary planned and (refundable) accommodations booked. Michael, the good sport that he is, agreed to it, despite his reservations. And two days after we returned from my family’s beach trip, we set off for the Amtrak station with just our backpacks, ready to spend more hours than you can possibly imagine on trains for the next two weeks.
Though Michael and I have traveled a lot in the past couple of years, something we’ve never done together is visit any of the cities I’ve lived in before. On this trip, we’d be visiting most of them. The Amtrak Crescent route runs through 4 places I’ve called home, and the Northeast Regional route continues on to one more. This would be less a trip of exploration and more a fast-paced journey of nostalgia for me—a chance to share with Michael some of the places I love. I also tried a thing on this trip that I’ve never tried when traveling before—working remotely. For several months now, I’ve been working remotely as a seasonal coordinator for a study abroad organization. In theory, I can do this job anywhere, specifically while sitting on trains for over 100 hours. Of course, this ended up being far more difficult than I anticipated.
Amtrak Ride 1: The Crescent from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. (30 hours including 3-hour delay)
As we were entering the city limits of Picayune, Mississippi, my hometown, we hit a car. (I’d like to note that the last time I rode this train was from DC to New Orleans back in December, and on that trip, we hit a car in Slidell, Louisiana, just 15 minutes away. Is this weird and bad luck, or does this tell us something about drivers in the Greater New Orleans area?) Thankfully the driver was fine, though their car was not, and this is a nice reminder to never stop at traffic lights on train tracks.
I’ve probably ridden this route a dozen times before, mostly between DC when I used to live there and my hometown in Mississippi. The ride from New Orleans takes around 28 hours if it’s not delayed. The nice thing is that the train almost never starts out crowded. You can stretch out across a whole row of seats if enough open seats are available. Each seat is about the size of a business class seat on a plane. There’s plenty of leg room, and seats recline a lot. It’s far more comfortable than you will ever be on a bus or plane. But then the train starts to get crowded, and the closer you get to Atlanta, the more people crowd on. You get to Atlanta around 11pm, and most people get off, so you have a few hours overnight where you might get two seats to yourself again. But then in Charlotte around 6am, a big crowd piles on. And you spend the rest of the morning/early afternoon feeling achy and delirious until you arrive in DC feeling like a zombie.
Working on the train was logical as a concept. I’d have nothing better to do for 28 hours—why not get paid for it? The reality was that the internet only half-worked, and my hotspot wasn’t reliable because there were so many areas with no phone service. I didn’t sleep well overnight, as expected, but instead of continuing to try to nap during the early morning, I had to start working again. If someone asks my opinion about working while on a long train ride, I’d say that it’s a luxury to be able to do it, but I’d recommend avoiding it if you can.
We arrived in the evening and stayed with Michael’s friends in Alexandria, Virginia. We went to bed when the sun had barely set. The next day was our one full day in DC, so we tried to cram in as much as possible. I lived in DC for a year and absolutely loved it, and it was hard to pick what to show Michael that he wouldn’t have seen before on his previous visits. We visited the Alexandria Farmer’s Market and rented bikes that we rode along the Mt. Vernon trail to DC. Coincidentally, we were there on the day of the Passport DC, Around the World Tour event, one of my very favorite events in the city. Dozens of the embassies in town open to the public and have food, music, dances, costumes, and cultural displays. It’s a travel enthusiast’s dream. Lines were long for a lot of the embassies, but we ventured to some of the smaller ones farther from the crowds and got to try beignets from Mauritania, see images of the war in Ukraine, try chickpea soup from Iraq, watch belly dancers from Trinidad and Tobago, and try on costumes from Kazakhstan. We had my favorite smoothie on Earth at South Block, and we got dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Compass Rose. And after the full day of biking and walking, I realized that my feet and I are no longer in peak-travel-shape and that I would need a full week of rest and reading in bathtubs to recover. But alas, there was no time. We left early the next morning for our next train.
Amtrak Ride 2: The Northeast Regional from Alexandria, Virginia, to New York City (4 hours)
The ride from DC to New York City is only about 4 hours, so it felt like barely any time at all. We were only spending a night in New York, so there was no possibility of seeing everything we wished we could see. We saw a couple of Michael’s friends who I hadn’t met yet and then got Levain Bakery cookies, the most important part of any New York City stop. We squeezed in a quick tour around Columbia University’s campus, and I showed Michael where I lived for two years during graduate school. He asked me if I felt nostalgic being there, and I had a hard time giving a name to what it felt like. I told him how the nostalgia I felt about my time in New York is all about the community I was part of there and less about the physical place. Visiting New York now always feels energizing and exciting, but it doesn’t feel like I’m transported back to a different time in my life. Living in New York made it feel far more accessible to me and less intimidating when I go back now. When I visit today, it feels like I have a mission and know what I want to squeeze in. I miss how fun graduate school was, my writing program, and the writing community. I miss living with my roommates and friends there, and I miss having leisure time to explore without a tight schedule. But I don’t miss living in New York City.
Elijah joined us for dumplings downtown, and I thought about how it was less than a year ago that I visited him in NYC, just before heading to Europe. I was carrying the same Osprey backpack that I was carrying for this trip, and he told me that I looked like a tortoise carrying my whole home. It feels like me and my tortoise pack have seen too much since then for that visit to have been less than a year ago, but at the same time, it feels like that was just last week.
Amtrak Ride 3: The Adirondack from New York City to Montreal (11 hours)
The Amtrak Adirondack route from New York City to Montreal is the most beautiful train ride I’ve ever taken in America. I did the trip for the first time in 2017 and have been wishing to do it again, but the route has been closed for nearly 3 years due to Covid and border issues. It just re-opened a couple months ago in time for our trip. The whole trip takes 10 or 11 hours including the border crossing. As you leave New York City, you have a view of the Hudson and all of the adorable towns alongside it for the first couple of hours. And then once you pass Albany, you ride through the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains alongside the giant Lake Champlain. This ride makes me question why I don’t live in Upstate New York where I can spend my days apple-picking and wandering mountain trails and searching for Champ-the-lake-monster.
At the border, we got to stay on the train as officers checked our passports and an enthusiastic dog searched our car. And then we were on our way to Montreal.
