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M-Y Family Trip report, day 15, "The Autotrain Revisited"
Up and showered before our official wake up call, we spend the morning finishing up our packing and sorting our stuff into "things staying in the car" and "things we need on the train"
We say goodbye to Fort Wilderness at 11 and drive to Sanford. We find the train station, but don't check in. Instead we go down the road a bit to Bennigan's and have some lunch.
At 1:30 we check in at the train station and have an hour to wait before boarding. We get our seat assignments and unfortunately they are upstairs. That means lugging all our junk up the narrow stairs. Not fun, but we get it done. We find that there are only three families in what the attendant refers to as the "kiddie car" Amtrak tries to keep families in one car and adults traveling without children in another. This actually works out nicely. Our kids make friends with the family sitting in front of us, which makes the afternoon go by quickly. We all have the same 7:30 dinner seating, too. Late afternoon snacks in the Lounge consist of that doritos, cheese curls and pretzel mix, and some fruit. No cheese and crackers, no veggies and dip and certainly no free wine. This is the difference between first class and coach.
(Side Note - The other difference immediately noticed is that the coach cars have accessible bathrooms available to all. Let me tell you, I was very happy to see this. I guess our attendant on the trip down told us there weren't any because coach is not accessible from first class)
Dinner in coach is not as nice as dinner in a sleeper. Firstly, you have to go to the dining car, no being waited on by your personal attendant. I don't have a problem with that, accept the dining car is all booths. As a large person I often have trouble with booths. I am just able to squeeze myself into the seat. Dinner isn't as fancy, either. No real china here, everything is paper and plastic. That's ok. The food is ok, too. Not excellent, just ok.
We return to our seats and are followed shortly afterward by the other family. They are getting ready to bed down for the night, so we have to keep DS from disturbing them. At 9 the lights in our car are dimmed. I guess they expect little kids to go to sleep early. Um, not gonna happen. I am hoping it won't take great efforts to keep our kids from bothering everyone else. I don't think they will be sleeping for hours yet, if at all.
DD pulls out a book and reads for a couple of hours. Much to my surprise, DS falls asleep, sitting next to Dad, around 10:30 and sleeps until 5 a.m., when he crosses the aisle to sit by me.
I managed to get about 2 hrs of sleep, on and off, throughout the night.
M-Y Family trip report, day 16 "I love the Hampton Inn"
Someone comes through the car around 6 announcing that breakfast in now being served and that we should expect the train to arrive ahead of schedule. Breakfast is the same as it was on the trip down.
When we finally pull into the station they make us sit on the train for quite awhile. This is ok, because we are all tired, except for DS who spends the time waiting with the new friends he made last night.
After disembarking we waited much longer for our van than we had in Florida.
Thankfully, the hotel was not far away. We stayed again at the Hampton Inn in Woodbridge. Again, I was afraid that our early arrival would mean that we wouldn't be allowed to check in. Luckily they had a room waiting for us. We settled in and went right to bed. We slept for several hours, then spent most of the rest of our day reading, snacking and watching TV. We ordered out for Chinese food for dinner, after which we went swimming. Once again we were the only people in the pool and had a very enjoyable time.
M-Y Family trip report, day 17 "Homeward Bound"
We check out of the Hampton Inn at noon and hit the road. On our way out of town we stop at the Dunkin Donuts and I use some gift certificates to get snacks for the road.
Our first rest stop is at the visitors center in Maryland. We were in the mood to find something to do on the way home and a very nice lady behind the counter gives me directions to some outlet stores.
Yeah, shopping! What better way to end a trip. We pass by the first mall because of the selection of stores and visit the outlets in Perryville. At the OshKoshB'Gosh store I manage to stock up on little boys jeans, shirts and sweaters. Dad gets a new winter coat at the LL Bean outlet. We buy a bunch of books, some toys and some kitchen items. Stopping here was a great idea!
After that the ride home is long-ish and boring. When we are almost home we decide to stop for dinner. Our first choice, Applebees, has a very large crowd of people with beepers hanging around outside the door. We don't even go in to ask how long the wait is. We passed a diner a little way back and decide to eat there. Typical diner food.
A few more miles and we are home. As we turn the corner onto our street I am relieved to see the house still standing. I feel this way every time we come home on vacation. It's kind of weird, I guess, but I almost expect that a good time is surely going to be followed by something horrible.
If you actually read this far, thank you!
Part 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8
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