Over The Rainbow Bridge

After midnight it was officially September 6th, our first travel day for the journey home! I’d decided to get up at 2:00am to get ready and be out the door by 2:30-2:40am, but Jess had other plans. She was up well before 2:00am getting everything set up. I figured as she had everything all packed I could lay down a while longer, but she had other plans, getting me up at 2:15am so we could be out the door by 2:20am. She was worried about how long it would take to catch a Lyft this late at night to drive us to the train station, and I was paranoid about the border being closed even though I know Rainbow Bridge is listed as a 24 hour crossing, so I guess it made sense to get going as early as we were willing.

So, off we set towards the Rainbow Bride, directly across from our hotel. We followed the path we’d taken when we arrived, crossing the street to walk up the left sidewalk, planning to cross over to the pedestrian crossing part when we reached the opening in the barricades. As we walked up, however, some teens who were already on the other side of the barricade called over to tell us we had gone the wrong way, that we had to come over through the pedestrian way as the wouldn’t let us through if we went up the car way. We said that’s where we were heading, we were just gonna get to there through the opening where the pedestrian bridge started and all three kids realized that there was, indeed, an opening for us to get through that we had been headed for. We all had a laugh and we thanked them for at least trying to help us even if we hadn’t actually needed any help. 

The three of them jumped over the turnstiles charging $1.25 to cross the border, so we assume they do this a lot, but Jess and I weren’t planning on risking anything so we found some Canadian and American change adding up to $2.50 and were on our way. Another man was crossing behind us, so that was a total of 4 other people crossing at around 2:40am, which surprised us as we imagined it would just be us! At the US border customs building we did a back-and-forth merry-go-round of holding the door for the person behind us and having the door held for us before we were summoned to the desk to get our passports read. We answered all the questions, which we expected as we imagined two Americans crossing close to 3:00am might be suspicious, but our bags weren’t even checked or anything and the whole thing took less than 5 minutes!

With that, we were back in America! Jess was going to call a Lyft, but then there were taxis right outside so we decided, given that we didn’t even know if any Lyft drivers would be available, to just take the taxi. This was probably for the best, given how long we waited for a Lyft to take us from the train station to our hotel at 11:00pm when we first arrived, but it was also kind of a hilarious mess! There were two guys and the guy who drove us was clearly doing this for the first time. As soon as we got in he was like “Oh, we need to talk about price.” Jess asked what the rate was and he was like “Uh…$25.” It was probably more than we would have been charged by Lyft and also not how this works at all, but we said Sure! Why not! $10 dollars extra for 3:00am service, fair enough. He drove us the 8 minutes or so to the train station and then we asked if he had change for a $10, as we only had 2 $20’s and a $10 on us. He said no. We offered him $2 dollars as we did have $3 in one’s and he had just picked a number to charge us but he decided to shuffle around in his car compartments to see if he could scrounge up $5 and he said he had and we gave him the $20 and the $10 and he gave us $1 and some change which we thought at the time might be Canadian money and just decided to go with it because honestly, it didn’t really matter. Later when I counted it I discovered he’d given us 4 $1 coins which you really don’t see much anymore and which I’m not sure he was even supposed to give away, but he had, indeed, given us $5!

We got out and tried to enter the building but it was locked. We thought maybe this way we’d come out of before had been an exit and maybe there was an entrance on the other side so we walked around the building but there wasn’t anything so we walked back, starting to get nervous about our train time being listed wrong and us being stranded outside the train station, but then we realized we’d read the station room times wrong and they opened at 3am. It was 2:59am so we were just a little early, but as we headed to a table to sit down the door flashed green and we were able to head inside! We were joined by about 4 other people in the 40 minutes before the train arrived and that was it for our early risers!

Jess and I worked out which way the train would be going when we got on and got seats facing that way to get set up in to sleep our 9 hours in coach away in as comfortably as possible. We had our sleep masks, headphones and music, and earplugs for a dealer’s choice style of sleep as we traveled through the early morning. Jess went for earplugs while I put in my headphones and loaded up my Tropical Island Ambience sounds saved to my phone and we tapped out for at least 6 of the 9 hours. It was SO cold on the train for no good reason, but as the sun came out and more people boarded it warmed up somewhat, but it was still too cold for my comfort. By around 6am, up one seat and across from me was this particularly loud older couple who didn’t seem to care that everyone else on the car was trying to sleep, or perhaps didn’t notice, as the woman tittered with a massively annoying laugh and the man chewed with his mouth open, but I only heard them in bursts as I woke intermittently from my naps. Sucked for everyone who didn’t bring headphones or earplugs though I bet.

We were both up after 9am, but we both elected to listen to music and relax for the rest of the journey. I did a little writing but the motion of the train was making me a little sickly so I had to keep stopping and starting, but I knew I’d have time to finish at the Amtrak Lounge so I wasn’t worried. We arrived about a half-hour early to Penn station, as it worked out, so we had plenty of time to relax before our 2:30pm train all the way to DeLand. We were let out in the station across from the Amtrak station, just because of how early w’d arrived, so we had to step out into New York to get to the lounge and wow. The streets of New York City are insane. I can’t imagine living there, let alone /wanting/ to live there. Chaos, just raw chaos! Everywhere!

But, we made it across the street, somehow, and into the Amtrak building and up to the lovely lounge where we did our makeup, put on our jewelry, redid our hair, and had ourselves a lovely little meal! We got more of those turkey banquette things, another hot cho-coffee, some Black Cherry soda, a strawberry danish, and some turkey wrap things. All was delightful! As we relaxed I got an email that said our train would be delayed at least a half hour and we both thought that was fine, more time to chill, but then the Amtrak Lounge announcer said that our train was there at station 14 and on-time, so I went up to the desk to ask her about it.

As I walked up another woman was just arriving and was pulling a paper out of her bag with one hand while the other held her phone. I assumed she was going to just scan in real quick so I stepped back to let her go first. Instead, however, she tried to walk around me to get in an the security guard had to call her back to get scanned in. She walked back with her phone to her ear, cutting in front of me as I’d been stepping forward to ask my question. The woman didn’t say a word to the desk agent scanning her in, just chatting on her phone, which is, to me, the PEAK of rudeness. At least pretend you think the person working is a human being like you and stop making them “interrupt” your phone call to tell you what they might need to tell you. As the woman walked away the desk agent gave a huge sigh and eye roll then called me over with a big smile, calling me Sweetie and asking what she could do for me because I was very polite and nice and she wanted me to know that she didn’t think I was like that rude woman before and I appreciated that!

She confirmed for me that the train we were on, the 97, was indeed on time on her end but it was perhaps just going to be a delayed departure, but we could head down and start boarding now. We decided to do that, figuring we were heading to our roomette so even if the train didn’t leave for another half-hour it wasn’t like we were giving up the lounge to sit in coach. We arrived at the escalator towards our train just as the usher was removing the divider to let people in. The energy in that line was… not good. People were cranky, unhappy, confused. The first people who got off the escalator turned to talk to the usher who was waiting to direct people, but then the people behind them stopped to line up there, so the people on the escalator couldn’t…get off. But they had to right, cause the escalator doesn’t stop moving, and as Jess and I shuffled our way through to clear up space my suitcase strap got caught in Jess’s suitcase wheel and we got ourselves caught in a pile-up for a second and it was just a mess. We eventually got out of that and were directed to the end of the train where the roomettes would be an we were greeted by Tamika who directed us inside to room 6.

Tamika was no Rodney. She was nice enough, and I think they were at full capacity for this train, but we missed our friendly and wonderful Rodney a lot. Tamika didn’t call us by name, or offer us warm brownies with soda, or any of that. But, she did do her job! She came to our room after a bit to explain some stuff to us, focusing on reminding us that the windows are indeed two-way windows so don’t use the bathroom with it open cause we might arrive at a station and those people /can/ see you. She told us someone would be around to get our dinner reservation time and to let her know when ours was so she could change our seats to beds while we were eating. The woman taking reservations came by and offered us 5:30pm or 7:30pm for dinner. Jess and I wanted an early night so we decided on 5:30pm. We were nothing feeling pretty awake at that point so we played a few rounds of Dungeon Mayhem, one of the games we’d brought with us, but after about an hour we got drowzy and just snoozed in our seats for the 2 hours. At one point Tamika came by to ask for our dinner time, and we both had a laugh when the train started moving after a stop and someone on the speakers went “It’s two stops Mike! Two stops!” and the train slammed on its breaks, but we really just napped until dinner!

Only half the tables at the dining cart were open and set for some reason, so it was community dining for all of us, with Jess and I sharing a table with a mother and son who appeared to be Nordic or Scandinavian or something European like that so we didn’t take to each other. Jess and I ordered the same things we’d ordered last time, because of who were are, and boy were they chintzy this time around with the food! I got a few carrots and green beans with my pasta primavera, though nothing like the amount I’d gotten on the way up, while Jess got a smaller brown of Mac and Cheese with no vegetables, just a handful of chips! The food was as good as it had been before, but the portions did make us chuckle! For desert we got what we’d gotten last time as well, one cheesecake and one chocolate cake, but our server hadn’t actually remembered who ordered what, choosing to just bring trays with a random number of cheesecakes and chocolate cakes so she had to back and get more chocolate cake as more people had, as expected ordered the chocolate. Strange, but whatever. If that’s her process. We ate our cakes when they arrived and were nice and full as we headed back to the room!

It turns out dinner had been divided into 5:30pm or 7:30pm because the power was going to be cut around 6:30pm-ish for a refuel. I remembered on the way up the power going out on the train around 7:00am-ish so Jess and I figured this was where we’d stopped to refuel on the way up too, given how the times matched up. As we waited for power Jess and I decided to do what we do best: Nap. We slept until about 9:00pm when I started getting ready for us to watch ‘Day Shift’ on my tablet. Of course, my tablet wanted to be a butt and refused to load more than a minute of the movie without buffering so eventually we transitioned to watching it on Jess’s phone and that worked fine enough! At long last, as we watched, we had ourselves the Pumpkin Bavarian Chocolate Truffles and the Watermelon energy drink we’d brought all this way with us from home. The movie ended around 11:30pm and we were getting ready for bed when we discovered some of the chocolate had gotten onto the white sheets and we were determined to find a way to clean some of it up as Tamika would likely not think it was chocolate at first glance and I wanted to spare her that. My sheets were a little wet as I finally climbed into bed, but they were mostly stain free, so I could live with it as we both got to bed around midnight.

September 7th, our final day! We were set to wake up at 8:00am but were woken a little earlier as something was happening across the hall from us where the attendants were trying to get into the room. I never figured out why, but they seemed insistent on getting in, though nothing seemed to happen once the person inside finally opened the door to speak with them. Weird. Anyway, we were definitely awake and getting started at 8:00am, getting dressed, brushing our teeth, and even doing our makeup to be ready for our final breakfast of the trip! We were at breakfast by 8:30am and, again, the attendant wasn’t super attendant, but she took our orders and brought us out tea, coffee (which I mixed with an extra cocoa packet I’d been given at the Amtrak Lounge), and two orders of French Toast. We know what we like, and we like what we know! Jess got whipped cream this time too though, so that was different for her at least! 

After breakfast Jess zoomed over to the Cafe Cart to get change for some of our cash as we wanted something to give to Tamika at the end of the trip and then we went back to our room. Tamika had seen us in the Dining Cart and had asked if we wanted our room readjusted while we were there and we’d said yes, but it seemed everyone had said the same thing and she hadn’t gotten to our room yet when we got back. We didn’t mine tho, just sitting for a minute and making sure we had all our stuff packed up nicely. She was by shortly to handle the change-over and Jess and I took advantage of the sitting-up setup to play another of our games, Cryptozoology for Beginners, until we arrived at the station. We also had our second energy drink, the kiwi-guava one, and we happily played until Tamika told us we had about two minutes before we would be arriving at the station! We finished our game, packed it up, did a final check of all our belongings, and headed for the exit!

We had to stand around for a bit at the back with Tamika and one of her coworkers and we all had a nice chat. DeLand is a two stop station (Two stops Mike! Two stops!) so we had to wait a little longer still for the rear of the train, us, to get unloaded, but eventually it happened! It was 11:50am and we were finally back in DeLand! Still not quite home though. We didn’t have a ride this time so we were gonna get a Lyft, but there was no service on Jess’s phone so after using the station bathroom we had to walk around a bit until she got some bars and could place the Lyft order. We waited under the gazebo our station has for… some reason until our ride arrived. The driver was a nice enough woman, but she was driving with one headphone in listening to an audiobook and I’m a big “no headphones while driving” person so that was iffy for me, but the drive was only around 8 minutes so I figured we were good as we set off! We were not, technically, setting off for Home though. We’re weird about strangers knowing our address so Jess just listed a building nearby to be our drop-off site so we still had about a half-mile walk to go before actually getting home. 

It was nice and hot as we walked, that sticky kind of heat where there’s no wind and everything sticks to you. We both commented how nice it was to be back in Florida where we could experience this. And we meant it! We live for the heat! People in New York, while we crossed the street, were complaining about how hot it was while Jess and I both had our cover-ups on, like who are you people that you think /that/ is hot? No no, we need that real good, genuine, disgusting heat of Florida. And we had it! We enjoyed it both outside on our walk to our house, and inside our house where it was a crisp 86 degrees inside on account of the A/C being off for 7 days. We hit the A/C on and then it was our usual mad dash to unpack our suitcases. We like it done IMMEDIATELY so it can just be done but also so can take stock of everything. We did indeed have everything we’d left with, and a dash extra! 

So, we’d made it home! Two days on a train, two days in Canada, two days on a train again, and that was it! Honestly, perfect vacation! We did everything we wanted to do, filled our time exactly how we wanted to fill it, the traveling portions were a pleasure rather than a teeth-gritting nuisance, and we got to wear so many of our nice outfits! It was a win all around! As always, though, I’m so glad to be home. Home to my house and my bed and my toys and my things and, especially, home to shower pressure that can actually get water to my scalp. That's the real Floridan treat worth traveling for!