And then there was New York, just like I pictured it, with skyscrapers and everything. I took the Acela Express from Washington DC to New York, North America's only high speed train. It is fast and it's electric, not diesel, no waiting for switiches or freight traffic, at stations doors open and close with little time in between and we left on time and arrived on time. And these trains are frequent. I got to Union Station and tried to buy a ticket, the salesman told me that one leaves in 5 minutes. That seemed a bit soon, I wasn't keen on running for the train. The next leaves one hour later, so this gave me time to get some food and find my way around the large station; the later train was $50 cheaper. All ... read more

We arrived in Washington DC on time, after being behind time for much of the trip; I don't know where and how Amtrak made up the time. We ate lunch at Union Station and then picked up our rental car. The parking lot at Washington DC Union Sation is quite extensive, we had quite a difficult time trying to find the rental car, up a couple of floors and across a bus depot. We got our car, a Nissan Cube and off we rolled. There was a terrific rain storm as we left the parking lot, I mean the rain was coming down as hard as rain can. And through this, we had to negotiate Washington DC traffic and find our way out of the city and south to Richmond, Virginia. Kris drove the Cube, I ... read more

We boarded the train in Sacramento and found our sleeper compartment quickly. The train was enroute to Chicago and we were travelling the entire distance. We settled in quickly, dropped our gear, met our carriage attendant and headed for the dining carriage to have lunch. The great thing about travelling in the sleeper compartment is that Amtrak calls this first class, despite the size of the compartment, food is included, three meals a day, cooked and served at tables. For every meal we are seated with someone new, so we get to meet our fellow travellers. Everyone has a story to tell, and everyone has a different reason for taking the train and not flying. It's two full days to Chicago, a lot slower than flying. Our first dining companions were from Kentucky, and the woman ... read more

We drove to Napa Valley today to do a little wine tasting, exploration of this valley, and to take some photographs. Napa Valley is only about an hour west on Interstate 80 from Sacramento, a developed corridor between the capital city of California - Sacramento and the coastal city of San Francisco. We packed the cooler for a hot day driving along this valley and set off some time late in the morning. As we got closer and closer to the coast and the valley, the vegetation became a little greener and more lush. The hills separate the valley from the coast, creating the Napa Valley, but these are only modest 800 m tall hills. Our first stop in Napa Valley was the Robert Mondavi vineyard and winery, and this was everyone else's first stop as ... read more

I arrived in San Fransisco only two hours after leaving Vancouver. On the same plane was one of my colleagues, and I didn't know she had booked a flight on the same plane. She sat many rows behind me, and we didn't get a chance to chat. The flight was simple but moving onto Sacramento was not. I took the BART train to the other side of the bay to Oakland, where I transfered to another BART train heading north. I got off at Richmond, a town north of Berkeley, then got onto an Amtrak train heading north east to Sacramento. I rolled into Sacramento 9 hours after I left the airport hotel in Vancouver, quite a long day considering how short a trip compared to other trips I've taken. And the change in temperature was ... read more