Pbenjay's Blog

Cover of North by Northwest

Monday 6:30 am Oh what a night….I’m not sure that I ever fell asleep, I know I dozed now and again because I have some remembrance of short dreams.  Trying to sleep in the seat was just awful; No way to get comfortable, no way to stretch out your legs and as I had been warned, it got really cold in the car last night.   I kept clutching my cotton shawl around my shoulders and arms.  The eye mask and neck pillow only helped a little.  I doused my eyes with drops in hopes that they would stop feeling like sandpaper and asked Peter to get us coffee.

He brought back two steaming cups of tasty coffee and convinced me that we should go to the dining car for breakfast.  I really didn’t want to be in bright lights but ok, he wanted a real meal so we went.  It was still dark out!  This is a trip of many firsts;  I’ve never traveled this far or overnight on a train before, I never ate in a dining car and I surely never  saw the sun rise in Savannah Georgia sitting at the window of a lovely dining car!  We sat across the table from a nice man and his young son who were on their way to Florida to celebrate Grandpa’s 100^th birthday!  It was really nice sitting at a table with a white tablecloth and having someone wait on you after the hours spent in our seats eating carrots and humus and fitfully trying to catch some zzzz’s 

It’s now 8:30am and my husband is already napping – he who claimed 4 hours of sleep was quite enough for him!

NOON  We didn’t make reservations for lunch, the food is not so great  for the price so I guess some of now warm snacks left from yesterday will be our lunch. I just watched my travelogue documentary on the Northern Lights narrated and starring Joanna Lumley.  I love this film; I want to duplicate her journey, it was amazing!  We are just past DeLand which is southwest of Daytona so we are still pretty far north in Florida. I’ve been tracking our progress with the GPS on my phone.  I can see and feel just how long this day is going to be.

The rest of the afternoon was all about reading and looking out the window and standing in line to go to the rest room.   Actually there was no line at the end because both the toilets weren’t working, but this is probably  TMI.  Overall, the fact is that riding an Amtrak train is certainly not the Orient Express.  Okay of course it’s not the Orient Express, The Blue Train of South Africa, and for sure my trip in no way resembled  the trip Cary Grant took in  North By Northwest.

Anyway it was absolutely wonderful to step off the train and be greeted by my daughter and my sister-in-law.  Soon we were at her house, the kids came running out and the smiles on their faces and the shrieks of “Gig, Gigi” made all the long hours of the night before seem very far away.

The girls have been staying up late the past few nights with all of the company arriving at their house  and so convincing them it was bed time took a little negotiation and a LOT of “but what is Santa going to think?”  I even invoked the ELF last night!  Surely you know about the “ELF”.  He  or she ELF is endowed with magic powers which allow the ELF to report back to Santa Claus each night on the day-long behavior of the house’s young denizens.  Not only does he snitch, he also moves around so each morning you have to find him – it’s always good to know where your elf is.  However, I can see that the real issue here is what do we use as leverage after Chistmas?

You know the luxurious feeling advertisers try to describe like a bubble bath, a certain lotion or even your bed at some  national chain hotel?  Well, when I laid my weary body down on the bed last night, I thought I had never felt anything so soft and cosy and comfortable!  AHhhhhh!