Strom Travel Diaries

Day 5 – Wednesday, October 19

We were up early, early, early at 4:15. We had left a lot of things out to dry and needed to pack them up before leaving. So we did that and got ourselves ready to go. We had anticipated leaving the hotel around 5:30 or 5:45, but we were ready before then, so we went ahead and left about 5:15. The Uber didn’t take very long and we got to the station a little after 5:20. We should have known it was all too easy.

A woman was standing outside the doors, talking on her phone. She immediately told us that the door was locked and then proceeded with her conversation, which was apparently with an Amtrak representative. The station was supposed to open at 3 AM, so it still being closed 2 ½ hours later was a bit of an issue. The Amtrak guy wasn’t a huge help, but to be fair, he was in a different state and couldn’t do much anyway. The station itself was also supposed to be managed by the city of Niagara Falls, which added another layer of complication. I felt so awful for this woman as she had been waiting in the cold and rain for over an hour at that point. There was a bit of an overhang at the entrance, so we weren’t being rained on directly, but over an hour in that would still be miserable.

After we had been there for about 10 minutes, the security guard finally ambled over and opened the door. He claimed he had been doing his rounds regularly and hadn’t opened the door yet as there was a problem with homeless people coming in. *cue large eye roll* The woman read him the riot act (though she was remarkably calm about it for the situation) as it was pretty clear that she wasn’t homeless–I don’t think the terminology “unhoused” has entered a lot of people’s vocabulary yet–and that she hadn’t seen him doing any rounds at all. It was obvious to all of us that he had been asleep and had just woken up. Mom and I were sure that this woman’s initiative in calling around had prompted someone to call and get ahold of this guy. And if she hadn’t been doing that, we weren’t sure that we would’ve made our train, as there was no way to get up to the platform otherwise.

Our first train ride of the day was a short one, just a couple of stops past Niagara Falls, to Buffalo. Side note: “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence! We had about an hour and a half wait in the tiny station there before getting on the Lake Shore Limited for an 11-hour ride to Boston. Fortunately, we were in a roomette for that part of the trip. From there it was a pretty easy ride. We read, did our word puzzles, and watched the scenery. We trekked towards the back of the train to the dining car for lunch and were taken by (quite pleasant) surprise to see that it was in a lovely Art Deco style. Mom had the braised short ribs and I had the baked ziti. Both were excellent choices. Then we trekked back to our car. The reason for the long walk was that the train would be splitting in Albany. The front-most sleeper, café car, and a couple of coach cars would be going to Boston. A couple of coach cars, the dining car, and the rear-most sleepers would be going to NYC.

Bellies quite full, we napped, read, and scenery gazed some more until dinner. Dinner was served in our rooms since the dining car had long departed. I had a vegan enchilada dish, which was supposed to be vegan Thai red curry noodles but was still delicious. Once dark had fallen, we turned out the lights so Mom could see outside more easily and keep watching the trees and towns go by.

We rolled into Boston pretty much on time, around 8:35. We hadn’t been able to check our bags at Albany but had been able to put our rolly cases in an unoccupied roomette. We left South Station and walked about 15 minutes to the hotel. After checking in, we found they had put us in an accessible room, which was interesting to explore. It would be another early morning for us, so we got our bags situated and got ready for bed.