Back on Amtrak

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high speed rail, Penn Station, postaday2013, slow trains, train travel, trains

The baby girl and I are on a train heading south to New York to spend a couple of days with Mamie, my mother, and my sister, Tatie. Since the baby girl has her spring break this week, I figured why not take a few days to head into the city, albeit the city is 3 hours away. One of the years perhaps we will see Amtrak putting in a high speed rail line between Springfield Massachusetts and New York City but for now it takes a solid 3 hours to get from Springfield to New York City. It is a comfortable ride with a dining car available for hot or cold beverages and a limited selection of sandwiches and salads. So we can’t complain, it is infinitely better than the bus in my estimation, Amtrak offers free Wi-Fi which I am not sure that the bus offers and the restrooms are much cleaner on the train.

By way of scenery there isn’t much to see because we are still in the throes of winter so the trees are naked and whatever greenery there might have been, has all turned brown or is still covered with some snow. I still took a picture or two to give you the general idea of our adventure down to the big city.

A day trip to Arcachon and Cap Ferret by train and boat

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boats, France, pictures, postaday2012, resorts, train travel, travel

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My goal for this day trip was to show the baby girl that you didn’t have to have a car to go to the beach. All that we needed was a train ticket and some patience.  We took the train from Begles and we changed over at Bordeaux Saint Jean and it took us all of an hour to get to Arcachon.

Personally I prefer Arcachon to Cap Ferret because I find that Arcachon is much more lively than Cap Ferret. My cousin of course has a house at the Cap but before that he always took me to Arcachon and that is where we went out to restaurants and nightclubs, that all happened way before I was married and before he was married as well. It was during the days of youth, no sleeping, no responsibilities and no worrries.

The boat ride that links Arcachon and Cap Ferret is about twenty minutes and Cap Ferret is small enough that you can easily walk around the whole town as well as you can Arcachon. This is the lesson that I wanted to impart on the baby girl, a car isn’t a necessity, it is a luxury. Public transport and other transportation can easily substitute a car any day of the week.

 

I know that Cap Ferret has a wonderful market but I had never visited the one at Arcachon and I was really happy that we hadn’t missed it, the smells were divine. You could smell all of the cut flowers and the fruit. The seafood was just out of the water fresh and that is not an exaggeration, Arcachon and Cap Ferret are known for their fishermen and the oyster and mussel beds. All I ever want to do at these markets is to buy everything and go somewhere to cook something and therein lies my dilemma. I don’t have a house there or else I would be cooking up a storm and baking as well. Who would I feed all the food to? I would have to make a lot of new friends and invite my family on a daily basis  and my hubby would have to retire permanently so that he would be on hand to eat everything that I dish up. Lovely fantasy don’t you think?

 

The only regret of the trip was that I didn’t allot enough time to make the side trip to the Dune de Pyla. The baby girl wanted to climb it all the way to the top and I didn’t see that happening with the train schedule that we had. I told her that she would have to plan a future trip with friends and conquer the Dune on her own. Not bad for a goal if she chooses to accept it.

This day that we spent together was a lot fun and I hope that it will rank as a lovely day in the baby girl’s memory log because it definitely rates as a fantastic day in mine.