Ispolkom
Engineer
The week before Christmas turned out to be a bad time to travel in the Midwest and Mrs. Ispolkom and I learned once more that, as the poet says, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley.”
Our original plan was to take the $1 Megabus from St. Paul to Chicago, attend “Porgy and Bess” at the Lyric Opera, spend the night at the Palmer House (where we had met 19 years ago), and take a roomette on the Capitol Limited the next evening to Washington. Our return trip would be in a bedroom on the Capitol Limited, then Megabus again to St. Paul.
We went to bed on Thursday, December 18, with some foreboding, because we knew that a serious storm was dumping 8-12 inches of snow on Illinois and Wisconsin. But what could we do but hope for the best?
The best didn’t happen. We arrived at our bus stop the next morning, only to find no bus. A fellow would-be passenger sat on hold with Megabus customer service only to find that there was no bus. It hadn’t left Chicago the night before. So much for the service disruption alert I’d signed up for.
We tried various options, and eventually got on a bus that left Minneapolis at 5:30 p.m., but naturally that meant that we had to turn back our opera tickets for the tax write-off. We eventually arrived in Chicago after midnight, and collapsed in our room at the Palmer House. Remarkably, we had a $99 rate to stay at this hotel, which also gives 500 AGR points per stay (plus more with the Triple Play promotion).
Check-out time came way too early, but we dragged our luggage back over to Union Station and left it at the Metropolitan Lounge, freeing ourselves for a day of sightseeing. We enjoyed an enormous Aztec exhibit at the Field Museum, and the Christmas decorations in downtown Chicago. We had lunch at a little restaurant called Cafecito on East Congress Street. The place is known for its Cubano sandwiches (a pressed sandwich with roast pork, ham, cheese, mustard, and pickles), but we were even more impressed by their lechon sandwich. It’s made from their amazing marinated roast pork, tomatoes, arugula, and onions.
Remarkably, we were able to pick up a bag of popcorn from Garrett’s without waiting in a long line. Did the two armed policemen in front of us discourage customers?
When we returned to Union Station in the late afternoon, it was a zoo, with crowds of people everywhere. The Metropolitan Lounge was quiet and surprisingly empty (maybe 60% of the seats were taken). We took the time to write Christmas cards until our train was called.
Because there were so many extra passengers who had missed previous connections because of weather and other problems, the 12/20 train #30 had an unusual consist: baggage, Superliner transition dorm, 2 Superliner sleepers, the CCC/diner, the lounge, 3-4 Superliner coaches, another Superliner transition dorm, and finally a single-level coach (a Horizon, perhaps? It had straight sides, in any case).
We made reservations for dinner at 6:30, and so were seated before the train even left the station at 7:05. I thought that the Cross Country Café car looked nice, but couldn’t help but notice that it didn’t seat as many patrons as a standard Superliner dining car. I did hear several other passengers comment on how nice they thought the car looked. With a bigger and quite crowded train, the dining car staff was soon deep in the weeds, and I heard calls for later seatings slip further and further back. On the other hand, we were quite happy with the service and food we got, and particularly liked the crab cakes (lots of crab meat, not much filler) that were the special. The Thai red curry we had for lunch the next day, though, was more like a Minnesotan curried hotdish than anything from Southeast Asia. On the way east the lounge car was unrefurbished, while going west the lounge car was one of the newly-refurbished 7-11-style lounge cars.
I always like reading the local newspaper in the morning on the train, but on this route, instead of the Pittsburgh Gazette, as I expected, we got the New York Times. The Sunday New York Times. I can’t complain about value for money there.
Our trip back on the December 26 train #29 was quite uneventful. We plunked down the extra money for a bedroom on this leg, as we have only previously traveled in roomettes and, once, a family bedroom. It was nice having a sink in the room, but I don’t mind going down the hall for a toilet or shower, and we decided that if we want to spend the extra money in the future, we’ll go with the family bedroom.
The train was late into Chicago because of flood-related slow orders. We saw lightning, and several feet of water in some underpasses, so I was quite happy for the engineer to take his time. In Chicago we left our bags in the Metropolitan Lounge again, and walked over to Cafecito to buy a couple of lechon sandwiches for our bus trip back to St. Paul.
Here we learned once again an important psychological fact. We’re much happier if we’re moving up in class of service. Taking a bus and then getting on a sleeper works much better than riding in a deluxe bedroom and then downgrading to a crowded bus. We got home safely, and only a little late (much better than the westbound Empire Builder that day, which was six hours late into St. Paul). Also, the trip cost only $2, rather than the $250 last-minute tickets on the Empire Builder would have cost, but still we’d rather be on a train.
Lessons from this trip:
1) We’re going to give Megabus a rest for a while.
2) It pays to sign up for AGR promotions, and to take the time to maximize points.
3) The bedroom is nice, but not worth the extra expense on a one-night trip.
4) The Metropolitan Lounge is a life-saver, an oasis of quiet when the train station is especially bustling.
Our original plan was to take the $1 Megabus from St. Paul to Chicago, attend “Porgy and Bess” at the Lyric Opera, spend the night at the Palmer House (where we had met 19 years ago), and take a roomette on the Capitol Limited the next evening to Washington. Our return trip would be in a bedroom on the Capitol Limited, then Megabus again to St. Paul.
We went to bed on Thursday, December 18, with some foreboding, because we knew that a serious storm was dumping 8-12 inches of snow on Illinois and Wisconsin. But what could we do but hope for the best?
The best didn’t happen. We arrived at our bus stop the next morning, only to find no bus. A fellow would-be passenger sat on hold with Megabus customer service only to find that there was no bus. It hadn’t left Chicago the night before. So much for the service disruption alert I’d signed up for.
We tried various options, and eventually got on a bus that left Minneapolis at 5:30 p.m., but naturally that meant that we had to turn back our opera tickets for the tax write-off. We eventually arrived in Chicago after midnight, and collapsed in our room at the Palmer House. Remarkably, we had a $99 rate to stay at this hotel, which also gives 500 AGR points per stay (plus more with the Triple Play promotion).
Check-out time came way too early, but we dragged our luggage back over to Union Station and left it at the Metropolitan Lounge, freeing ourselves for a day of sightseeing. We enjoyed an enormous Aztec exhibit at the Field Museum, and the Christmas decorations in downtown Chicago. We had lunch at a little restaurant called Cafecito on East Congress Street. The place is known for its Cubano sandwiches (a pressed sandwich with roast pork, ham, cheese, mustard, and pickles), but we were even more impressed by their lechon sandwich. It’s made from their amazing marinated roast pork, tomatoes, arugula, and onions.
Remarkably, we were able to pick up a bag of popcorn from Garrett’s without waiting in a long line. Did the two armed policemen in front of us discourage customers?
When we returned to Union Station in the late afternoon, it was a zoo, with crowds of people everywhere. The Metropolitan Lounge was quiet and surprisingly empty (maybe 60% of the seats were taken). We took the time to write Christmas cards until our train was called.
Because there were so many extra passengers who had missed previous connections because of weather and other problems, the 12/20 train #30 had an unusual consist: baggage, Superliner transition dorm, 2 Superliner sleepers, the CCC/diner, the lounge, 3-4 Superliner coaches, another Superliner transition dorm, and finally a single-level coach (a Horizon, perhaps? It had straight sides, in any case).
We made reservations for dinner at 6:30, and so were seated before the train even left the station at 7:05. I thought that the Cross Country Café car looked nice, but couldn’t help but notice that it didn’t seat as many patrons as a standard Superliner dining car. I did hear several other passengers comment on how nice they thought the car looked. With a bigger and quite crowded train, the dining car staff was soon deep in the weeds, and I heard calls for later seatings slip further and further back. On the other hand, we were quite happy with the service and food we got, and particularly liked the crab cakes (lots of crab meat, not much filler) that were the special. The Thai red curry we had for lunch the next day, though, was more like a Minnesotan curried hotdish than anything from Southeast Asia. On the way east the lounge car was unrefurbished, while going west the lounge car was one of the newly-refurbished 7-11-style lounge cars.
I always like reading the local newspaper in the morning on the train, but on this route, instead of the Pittsburgh Gazette, as I expected, we got the New York Times. The Sunday New York Times. I can’t complain about value for money there.
Our trip back on the December 26 train #29 was quite uneventful. We plunked down the extra money for a bedroom on this leg, as we have only previously traveled in roomettes and, once, a family bedroom. It was nice having a sink in the room, but I don’t mind going down the hall for a toilet or shower, and we decided that if we want to spend the extra money in the future, we’ll go with the family bedroom.
The train was late into Chicago because of flood-related slow orders. We saw lightning, and several feet of water in some underpasses, so I was quite happy for the engineer to take his time. In Chicago we left our bags in the Metropolitan Lounge again, and walked over to Cafecito to buy a couple of lechon sandwiches for our bus trip back to St. Paul.
Here we learned once again an important psychological fact. We’re much happier if we’re moving up in class of service. Taking a bus and then getting on a sleeper works much better than riding in a deluxe bedroom and then downgrading to a crowded bus. We got home safely, and only a little late (much better than the westbound Empire Builder that day, which was six hours late into St. Paul). Also, the trip cost only $2, rather than the $250 last-minute tickets on the Empire Builder would have cost, but still we’d rather be on a train.
Lessons from this trip:
1) We’re going to give Megabus a rest for a while.
2) It pays to sign up for AGR promotions, and to take the time to maximize points.
3) The bedroom is nice, but not worth the extra expense on a one-night trip.
4) The Metropolitan Lounge is a life-saver, an oasis of quiet when the train station is especially bustling.
