# Grand Rapids > Chicago > Emeryville > SF > Oakland &#6



## KleShreen (Aug 28, 2018)

Hello all! I had used this forum to plan my and my new wife's honeymoon for about a year, and we finally took our trip over the last week and a half! Wanted to recap each Amtrak portion for everyone!

On 8/19, we got on the Pere Marquette from Grand Rapids, MI to Chicago at 6 a.m. Eastern. Rode in coach, nothing special. Everything ran on time, we got in to Chicago about 15 minutes early and walked around Chicago during our 4ish hour layover. The Metro Lounge was pretty awesome. I'm glad we could keep our bags there, and the gentleman manning the lounge was stellar. He was the only person working the thing, and he was a hawk. He knew anyone and everyone walking in and out of there, whether it was their first time coming in or their 30th time. He knew whose tickets he had checked previously or had not checked. He poked his head in to the storage area if he noticed someone in there a little too long (which happened to us as my wife was putting makeup on before we stored our bags). The station itself has a number of food and beverage options, and it looked like most of it was undergoing renovations, as everything past the Metro Lounge in the Great Hall was draped in plastic.

The CZ left on time from Chicago, and we made decent time from the start. We were only running a couple minutes late for the first few stops. Our first dining experience was not the best. We quickly learned that we had an extremely limited menu, and the dining car staff told us that the wrong dining car was on the train. It was apparently an "overnight" dining car where one side had about eight booths (10?), and the other side had about four booths, and that is where the dining car crew hung out most of the time. No real "kitchen", so the menu for dinner the first night was either the land & sea, the steak, or the chicken breast. No desert options because they had a limited amount of them, and the elevator was also broken, so someone was running up and down the stairs for all the food the entire trip. Later in the trip, we would get lunch and dinner desert options, but it was one at a time. So for instance, lunch on the second day (where the only meal options were burger, veggie burger, salad, hot dog, or mac and cheese), the desert option was caramel creme brulee or nothing. Dinner the second day, you got the chocolate cake or nothing. They just rotated the deserts, and the options for lunch and dinner swapped on the second day of travel. Breakfast was the same both times - pancakes or continental breakfast. They had no eggs. The dining car staff was verbally disgruntled throughout the trip. Every single meal they would make mention that they had the wrong dining car, and during non-dining hours, if you walked through the dining car to get to the lounge car, you would hear the employees talking amongst themselves talking about how frustrating it was and that they "were done with this job" and were "over this crap". The gentleman who seemed to be "in charge" of the dining car tried to put on a good face while taking orders and delivering food, but you could easily tell he was annoyed the whole time. I realize it was probably frustrating for them, but still.

With all that said, I loved the cafe below the lounge. That became my embassy. The pepperoni pizza pretzel melt was my best friend. So good. So. Good. The guy running the cafe car was also really funny with his announcements, and he would frequently be seen walking around the train in different outfits. Inflated vinyl flamingo hat, giant glasses, etc.

Anyway, our first night, we got delayed up to 2 hours and 15 minutes overnight. I'm not sure why, it happened while we were asleep. But we ran between 90 and 140 minutes behind from about Iowa through Nebraska.

In Colorado, we had to drop off two private cars and hook things back up. We probably spent about an hour in the Denver area dropping them off, changing tracks because we pulled in to the wrong one initially, etc. It was an opportunity to get off and stock up on snacks and drinks at (somewhat) normal prices at a store nearby, though.

Our final overnight, we had to stop on two different occasions for weather reasons. Large storms were rolling through. We stopped and watched through our window at the lightning and rain and I went in to the lounge car to watch a bit. It was pretty soothing. I felt bad both times for the poor worker who had to go outside with a flashlight and "inspect" the train before taking off. The two stops happened within about an hour of each other.

This was both of our first times on a train. We weren't sure what to expect. We both mostly fit on only the lower berth in the bedroom. We are both not skinny, but not huge either. We would have been better off utilizing the top bunk, but we opted not to. We might if we were to take another trip, but being our honeymoon, it would have felt weird to sleep separate from each other. Sleeping was the hardest part of the trip for me. The jostling back and forth side-to-side was waking me up every 45-60 minutes. The stopping and going didn't bother me at all, but the train bouncing off each side of the tracks would wake me up nearly every time. I got my best sleep during the day with the bed put up and just sitting on the couch.

Our SCA was interesting. He seemed very, very tired, all the time. He was still very helpful, and let us know everything. But he was not the one asking us for reservations or anything, didn't let us know when reservations would be taken, etc., as it appears most do based on other trip reports I've seen on here. We ended up needing to have our door open throughout most of the day, even when napping, so we could get lunch and dinner reservations (although we didn't have reservations on the final day, it was just first come first serve, and breakfast was always first come first serve) when someone would come through for them.

We arrived in Emeryville about 45 minutes early despite being over 2 hours behind at one point, so that was nice! Our connecting bus from Emervyille to Fisherman's Wharf was scheduled for 1 hour, 15 minutes, and it ended up being about 40 minutes early because our bus left about a half hour early, and the trip was much shorter than expected. So us worrying about not getting to our airbnb on time (they stopped taking check-ins at 6 p.m., and we were scheduled to arrive there at 5:35 p.m.) ended up being useless to worry about, as we got there at about 4:55 p.m. instead.

We spent the rest of that evening in San Francisco and also the entire next day.

The following day, we hopped on the shuttle from Fisherman's Wharf to Jack London Square in Oakland. This was a little frustrating because the bus driver was absolutely zero help. There were two Amtrak buses there at one point, and there were about 6 of us waiting to go to Oakland. We had the "bus numbers" on our tickets, but people were getting confused because those were really route numbers and not bus numbers, and the signs at the stop used bus numbers and not route numbers. So when a bus would pull up, you'd see the bus number, which matched nothing on your ticket, and people were impatient to wait for the electronic sign to scroll to see what route it was. People would ask the driver and they'd just say what their last stop was. Someone asked "Is this going to Oakland?" and his response was just "Emeryville" which didn't really answer the person's question. Eventually, our bus showed up, and the driver still wasn't much help. People wanted to make sure they were getting on the right bus, and he would just ask for last name and provide nothing else. No information, no anything, just ask for last name.

Anyway, we got to Oakland eventually to wait for the Coast Starlight that would take us to LA. It got there about 10 minutes early and everything went well. We got on just in time to get the tail end of breakfast, and it was a stark contrast to the CZ. It was the "full" dining car that I am assuming was supposed to be the same thing the CZ was going to have. They had a full menu, the dining car staff was much more accommodating and nice. We had eggs!

The cafe, my favorite part, was a little different on this one. There was only one person working it, and he would take an hour break at lunch and dinner. On the CZ, it was open the entirety between 6 am and 11 pm, and there were two people working it. It was kind of disappointing the cafe closed about 2 hours before the train was due to arrive in LA, and about 30 minutes after dinner was done being served. I understand the reasoning, but it was weird to get food and drink at dinner, and then go to the cafe to get snacks and drinks for the last part of the trip immediately after. Felt gluttonous. Maybe that's just a me problem.

Our SCA on the Coast Starlight wasn't the most helpful person, either. Apparently our roomette had people in it who got off at Oakland, where we got on. Our SCA told us when we got on that our room needed to be turned over for us, so he advised us to go to breakfast and he would have it done by the time we got back. Well, that didn't happen. Our room got turned over about 3 hours in to the trip, which we spent nearly entirely in the dining car and lounge, and even then, we walked in to a full garbage, and coffee spilled on the floor that we ended up cleaning up with the towels in the room.

We ended up arriving in LA about 40 minutes early. We got on a LAX Flyaway bus to go to LAX and pick up our rental car, and that was that! Spent the next three days in LA, one at Disneyland, one in Hollywood, and one in Santa Monica.

My main takeaways: I was very disappointed we didn't have the correct dining car on the CZ. I think the trip would have felt much better if we had a full menu, and a dining staff that wasn't just angry the whole time. My biggest takeaway, though, was the entire lack of security anywhere along the way. I was shocked at it. At no point did anyone look at us, or our bags, or anything. And nobody even looked at our tickets besides when we first got on in Grand Rapids, and when we first got on the CZ in Chicago. Nobody checked our tickets when we would get off the train at a fresh air stop and get back on, even after walking pretty far away from the train to go in to a store. Bus driver from Emeryville to SF didn't check our tickets. Nobody checked our tickets when we got on the Coast Starlight in Oakland or at any fresh air stop on that route, either. It seemed like a free-for-all, and I can't wrap my head around how easy it would be for anyone to get on the train at any random stop and just mill around avoiding the person checking tickets in the "seat" sections of coach and business. You could get on at any stop, hang out in the lounge car, find an empty roomette, etc. and go wherever you wanted and I don't think anyone would stop you. It was a little disconcerting how lackadaisical everything was.

With that said, I thought the food on both trains was spectacular. The mashed potatoes might be one of my most favorite things I've ever eaten. There were quite a few characters we sat with at the meals which was fun. There were a lot of international riders, as well. When sitting in the lounge car on the CZ, I think we had someone from Europe or New Zealand or Australia next to us every single time. Also had a couple Amish riding the CZ as well hanging out in the lounge car. The sleeping was awful for me, but it helped me sleep very well on the plane trip home because nothing could wake me up on the plane after trying to sleep on the train.

I'll post pictures of our adventure later on after I steal them off Facebook =)


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## KleShreen (Aug 28, 2018)

Oh, also, I was surprised at how evenly split the age of riders was. It was pretty much equal between people over 40 and people under 40. I guess I expected a heavy skew towards the older generation, but that wasn't the case.


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## Maglev (Aug 28, 2018)

KleShreen said:


> You could get on at any stop, hang out in the lounge car, find an empty roomette, etc. and go wherever you wanted and I don't think anyone would stop you. It was a little disconcerting how lackadaisical everything was.


It's really not that easy to stow away on a train, especially in a Sleeper. The SCA knows which rooms are occupied when, and if your SCA does nothing else, he or she usually keeps an eye out for anyone who creates extra work.


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## KleShreen (Aug 28, 2018)

Maglev said:


> KleShreen said:
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> > You could get on at any stop, hang out in the lounge car, find an empty roomette, etc. and go wherever you wanted and I don't think anyone would stop you. It was a little disconcerting how lackadaisical everything was.
> ...


I obviously don't know the details like everyone else here. Just seemed from first glance that if you were at any of the fresh air stops, you could just hop on the train and head to the lounge car and never be questioned about anything. I understand in coach/business they'll use the placards to note your end destination, and that the SCA's will notice people in sleepers. But for instance my wife and I roamed the CZ and sat in a roomette for about an hour that was empty, just to see what it was like before we had ours on the Coast Starlight, and nobody noticed, particularly since it was on the first floor. Just going in to the trip, I expected to have my tickets checked at every single point. I carried my tickets out with us at every fresh air stop for the first half of the trip until I realized nobody was looking at them anyway when we got back on.


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## Maglev (Aug 28, 2018)

In sleepers, it's not uncommon for no Amtrak official to examine your ticket. The Conductor and SCA know that someone is supposed to occupy your room, and if two parties show up they'll probably ask to see some tickets and ID (or if a room that is supposed to be empty is occupied).

I recently realized that sitting in an unoccupied sleeper room might be considered a felony, and will always ask the SCA if it's okay to do so from now on.


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## Pere Flyer (Aug 28, 2018)

Your experience with my home train, the Pere Marquette, is exactly why I love the route so much: no frills and excellent timekeeping.

Can’t say the same about my college train, the Heartland Flyer… (Extend 821/822 to Wichita, KCY, and SAS, and reroute the Eagle WB from FTW!)


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## caravanman (Aug 28, 2018)

It seems a shame that the staff you encountered were so grumpy, their attitude can make or break a trip for me.

Glad you enjoyed the mashed potatoes, a happy honeymoon memory...






Thanks for posting!

Ed.


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## cpotisch (Aug 28, 2018)

KleShreen said:


> Our first dining experience was not the best. We quickly learned that we had an extremely limited menu, and the dining car staff told us that the wrong dining car was on the train. It was apparently an "overnight" dining car where one side had about eight booths (10?), and the other side had about four booths, and that is where the dining car crew hung out most of the time. No real "kitchen", so the menu for dinner the first night was either the land & sea, the steak, or the chicken breast.


Yeah, instead of a standard diner you ended up with a diner-lounge also known as the "Cross Country Cafe". It's a standard Superliner diner which was retrofitted about 10 years ago with a new upper-level layout, so as to be able to serve as both a lounge car and a dining car. This is why it has the two sections and the "bar" in the middle. One side consists of 10 pretty conventional tables, whereas the other side consists of two conventional tables and two 3-seat booths.

These cars are normally only used on the City of New Orleans, Texas Eagle, and Capitol Limited trains, but every one in a while one will find its way onto another route. Just so you know though, the Cross Country Cafes have the exact same kitchen facilities and equipment as any other conventional diner, so the food is identical. I don't know why the crew had to serve that limited menu, but the equipment itself would not have been the issue. The only real disadvantage of the Cross Country Cafe is the reduced capacity, since it only has 10 usable tables compared to the 18 tables in a standard diner.


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## cpotisch (Aug 28, 2018)

Maglev said:


> KleShreen said:
> 
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> > You could get on at any stop, hang out in the lounge car, find an empty roomette, etc. and go wherever you wanted and I don't think anyone would stop you. It was a little disconcerting how lackadaisical everything was.
> ...


Yeah, it might seem like a pretty loose system, but SCAs can easily remember who the ticketed passengers in their car are, and they almost always stand at the door at the smoke stops. Every once in a while you'll hear about someone without a sleeper ticket making it into a room, but in those cases it's almost always a ticketed coach passenger who just snuck their way in, not some random person who snuck onto the train itself.


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## Woodcut60 (Aug 29, 2018)

Thanks for posting this trip report. Yes, the onboard staff and their attitude is crucial for the overall experience. In general, I've been lucky. Glad you arrived early at every end destination. Nice work, Amtrak!


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## KleShreen (Aug 29, 2018)

Thanks everyone for the insight! Pictures from our trip will get posted by the end of the weekend when we finally get them all off our phones. Haha.


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## KleShreen (Sep 11, 2018)

Alright guys, I'm late with this. Really late. But we finally got everything up!

Here is us departing from Grand Rapids at quarter to dawn in the morning!


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## KleShreen (Sep 11, 2018)

We tried to take some pictures here and there, but much of the ride to Chicago was a little too dark. Here's a few from before arriving in Chicago, and of Union Station:


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## KleShreen (Sep 11, 2018)

After walking around downtown Chicago for a while, my new wife getting a haircut after she grew it out for the wedding, eating breakfast at Yolk, etc., we finally got in to our sleeper car for the CZ!





















Here was our dining car that literally no worker on the train liked and constantly complained about:


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## KleShreen (Sep 11, 2018)

Finally, we were on our way!











We tried to get pictures of city signs at as many stops as we were awake for. We had to get this one for my mom, who is a big MASH fan. This is in Iowa:


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## KleShreen (Sep 11, 2018)

And I don't know if I have the right order on these ones:
















We thought it was funny that there were private cars attached, and that there is apparently a guard on board?


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## KleShreen (Sep 11, 2018)

We ended up going to sleep in Iowa, and woke up in Colorado!





















Alright, tomorrow I'll share a bunch of pictures from when we went through the second half of the CZ trip!


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## OBS (Sep 11, 2018)

Great pictures!


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## railiner (Sep 12, 2018)

Very nice, and thanks for sharing!

And congratulation's on your wedding...


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## Bob Dylan (Sep 12, 2018)

Congrats, and thanks for sharing! Now Real Life begins but there's always an Adventure to be had on the Rails!


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## cpotisch (Sep 12, 2018)

Great pictures! Keep 'em coming!


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## cpotisch (Sep 12, 2018)

KleShreen said:


> We thought it was funny that there were private cars attached, and that there is apparently a guard on board?


Ah, the Patrick Henry cars. Those two cars (the Evelyn A. Henry and the Warren R. Henry) are on the CZ all the time. They charge a *minimum* of about $10K per day to use those cars, so I don't at all doubt that there's a guard on board!


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

cpotisch said:


> KleShreen said:
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Holy cow. What are they used for? Business trips? Politicians? At 10k per day, I gotta know what kind of perks they come with. Haha. We ended up dropping them off in Denver.

Ah, nevermind. Found the website which has an awesome video on it: http://phcp.com/the-train/

Man, those bedrooms look so good compared to what we had. Hahaha


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

cpotisch said:


> Great pictures! Keep 'em coming!


I'll get the good ones up tonight =)


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## cpotisch (Sep 12, 2018)

KleShreen said:


> cpotisch said:
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When my dad and I were on the CZ in Summer of 2016, the Patrick Henry cars were on the back. We found out after we got off in Chicago that it was being used for someone's 50th wedding anniversary party. Put simply, it's for people who have a load of money to spend who either have something to celebrate or who really need to travel in comfort.


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

Alright, here's some more! I have no idea what the correct order of these are, but they're all from somewhere between Colorado and Nevada =)


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

Coming in to Denver:











As a sports fan, I enjoyed that we passed three stadiums on our trip. Guaranteed Rate Field (Chicago White Sox), Coors Field (Colorado Rockies, below) and Levi's Stadium (San Francisco 49ers):


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

My wife just wanted a hot dog for lunch on our second day. So they obliged. When they brought it, he goes "And a hot dog for the child" lol:






And our creme brulee!


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

These were by far our favorite food item on the train:






Our souvenir blanket and view!






And I *think* all of these are from along the Colorado.


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

Some of those might be from Utah.


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

My favorite portion, along the Glenwood Canyon (I think that's what it is called?):


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

We went through a couple areas where smoke from the wildfires out west was visible:


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## KleShreen (Sep 12, 2018)

And now we are heading in to California!


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## KleShreen (Sep 13, 2018)




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## KleShreen (Sep 13, 2018)

Bye train!!!


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## KleShreen (Sep 13, 2018)

Also, here was one of the guys who was working in the lounge car towards the end of our trip:






Also, our last meal on the CZ...again, wife was given her food with a "and a mac and cheese for our favorite child" line lol:






Getting on our bus to San Francisco!






Crossing in to San Francisco!






And here is where we got off. Literally right in the middle of everything!






Will share some more tomorrow, a couple shots from our AirBNB which was a sail boat docked in Pier 39, and then our Coast Starlight trip down to Los Angeles.


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## Bob Dylan (Sep 13, 2018)

Excellent pics, and Wonderful Memories!

Thanks for sharing!


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## bms (Sep 13, 2018)

Great posts, and congratulations!


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## KleShreen (Sep 13, 2018)

Since people were interested in our airbnb being a sailboat that was docked in Pier 39, here are a couple pictures of that!

Here is the boat we stayed on for our two nights in San Francisco:






And here is what we saw on the dock only two boats down from us:






And here was our view of Alcatraz from the boat we were staying on:






We got on the Coast Starlight in the morning after hopping on the Amtrak bus right at the entrance to the pier we were staying on. Great, great stuff, location-wise.






And here was breakfast, which we got almost immediately after getting on, as it was about to wrap up shortly after we boarded. It was the first time we got eggs since the CZ didn't have any due to the dining car issue:


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## KleShreen (Sep 13, 2018)

And the rest is the wrap-up to the Amtrak portion of our honeymoon. Some pictures along the ocean on our way from Oakland to Los Angeles. I can't guarantee these are in any kind of order, haha.


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## KleShreen (Sep 13, 2018)




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## KleShreen (Sep 13, 2018)




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## KleShreen (Sep 13, 2018)




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## desertflyer (Sep 18, 2018)

Nice pictures. It sounds like, despite the food on the CZ, the trip was a great success. I hope San Francisco/California treated you well!


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## Bob Dylan (Sep 18, 2018)

Enjoyable pics,thanks for sharing!


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## KleShreen (Sep 19, 2018)

desertflyer said:


> Nice pictures. It sounds like, despite the food on the CZ, the trip was a great success. I hope San Francisco/California treated you well!


It was great! We had a wonderful time. We kind of wish we would have flipped our vacation...instead of 1.5 days in San Francisco and 3 days in LA, probably would have been better to do 3 days in San Francisco and 1.5 days in LA. In San Francisco we walked throughout the Fisherman's Wharf area, took a tour bus around town and spent a few hours at Golden Gate Park in the academy of sciences museum, went to Ashbury/Haight area, went across the bridge and back, walked Lombard (good god that road goes straight up), went to Ghirardelli Square all in one day...we didn't get a chance to ride one of the trolleys like we wanted because it was a 2 hour wait. But we just felt like there was so much more to do!

In LA we had one day at Disney, one day in Hollywood, and one day in Santa Monica. We both really liked Santa Monica and could have spent another whole day there probably. One day each was enough for Hollywood and Disney, though. Haha


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## KleShreen (Sep 19, 2018)

Bob Dylan said:


> Enjoyable pics,thanks for sharing!


Thanks for looking =)

Someday we want to try and do the southwest route on the Texas Eagle or SW Chief and do the Empire Builder as well since neither of us have ever been north and west of Chicago, haha.


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## cpotisch (Sep 19, 2018)

KleShreen said:


> we didn't get a chance to ride one of the trolleys like we wanted because it was a 2 hour wait. But we just felt like there was so much more to do!


Sorry, you would have had to wait for two hours to ride a trolley? Why? They are scheduled way closer together than that.


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## KleShreen (Sep 19, 2018)

cpotisch said:


> KleShreen said:
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> ...


There was a very large line waiting to take them everywhere. There were only two trolley cars for each route, and each trolley could hold about 50 people, but the line of people at each "station" to get on them had hundreds of people at them. We wanted to take one from Fisherman's Wharf in to Chinatown, and at that one, the ticket booth said it was about a 2 hour wait because they had about five full runs of tickets solid that were waiting to board still.


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## cpotisch (Sep 19, 2018)

KleShreen said:


> cpotisch said:
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You thinking of trolleys or cable cars?


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## KleShreen (Sep 19, 2018)

cpotisch said:


> KleShreen said:
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They're the same thing, no?

We were trying to take one of the routes here: https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/muni/cable-cars

So I guess cable cars? If you google San Francisco trolley instead, it brings up the same results, so I'm not sure what the difference is I guess


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## cpotisch (Sep 19, 2018)

KleShreen said:


> cpotisch said:
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Nope. They are two different things.

https://www.streetcar.org/wheels-motion/difference/


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## KleShreen (Sep 20, 2018)

cpotisch said:


> KleShreen said:
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Huh, thanks! We were trying to ride the cable cars, those are what had the long wait


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