Planeless Circumnavigation (Pt. 3): Chicago to the boat (Vancouver)

It seems like most of the long-haul train trips plan to travel overnight, so when we pulled into Chicago in the morning, I had most of the day to wander around the (very large) station before the next train left. Chicago’s station was quite nice – didn’t have the historical air that Washington DC had, but was more sprawled out, with more restaurants and a bookstore. Wandering around outside was nice as well; I don’t know Chicago’s layout, but the station was right next to a river, and the weather was still pretty nice there. Couldn’t complain.

I’m not going to lie though, my adventure on Amtrak cued me into one thing by this point – the motion of the train made it hard for me to eat, and when I don’t eat, it’s hard to sleep. By the time we rolled into Chicago, I was in a pretty impressive state – two nights without sleep, and I’d eaten something like 1000 calories on each leg of the trip. Unfortunately for me, weight loss is not something on my agenda (quite the opposite, actually), so it was great to get into station, grab something to eat, and catch a few hours of sleep. After all, I had another two days of the same coming up – the Seattle-bound Empire Builder train takes around 40 hours.

After grabbing lunch, taking a walk outside to warm up in the sunlight, and buying a couple snacks and containers of apple juice to keep my caloric intake not-humiliating on the Seattle leg, I returned to the station, napped, and eventually boarded the train. Things went slowly from there, and I found myself in a first-floor roomette – a little warm, but more than enough room.

I will stop here to say that if you want to make one of these trips, and don’t fall asleep right away in airplane economy seats, seriously consider a roomette. Obviously they’re a bit more pricy than their normal-car counterparts, but most people get antsy after a few hours in an airplane seat – I can’t imagine what it would be like spending 36 hours in one.  Unless you’re taking Amtrak to try to save money (which, considering the loss in time and the relative cheapness of airfare tickets, well, I assume you’re not going cross-country in one), I’d definitely take the extra precautions to make your journey as pleasant as possible.

Granted, if you get a seat, you can always head to the view-car – there’s a series of seats facing out a myriad number of windows, allowing riders to see the scenery rush by. During my first night on the train, as I couldn’t sleep, I wandered up to this car around 3 am to find a number of people in a similar state, and some from the normal seats stretched out on multiple seats, catching the sleep they couldn’t elsewhere. I wouldn’t bet on being able to do this, but there’s always the chance.

In any case, the trip across the northern United States was largely uneventful – the train was forced to stop for a couple hours to wait on a bridge near the Mississippi, actually stopping on the bridge just as the sun was going down and affording a nice view of everything, then picked up again sometime after dark. Things got a bit chillier as we headed across northern Montana and like regions – I wasn’t sure where we were, but it surprised me to see what looked like a windfarm in the distance – and ultimately, as we headed up into the mountains things got a little rougher.

Overall, I spent half the nights and day taking naps, snacking slowly on pasta, and drinking an enormous amount of water. I’m not sure if it was the air in the train or what, but my mouth was always pretty dry, though thankfully they had plenty of complimentary water on stock. At least, I think it was complimentary.

Finally, after only half sleeping for the few days, wandering around the trains, meeting passengers along the way, we pulled into Seattle station in the morning. There was about an hour before the bus bound for Vancouver was leaving, but I was hungry, exhausted, and my boat wasn’t leaving until early evening the next day. I swapped my bus ticket out for one the following day and got my luggage.

Now, Amtrak had a weight limit on my bag, one that my bag was about twice as heavy as -  half my luggage was pulled out of my bag and split across a series of cardboard boxes, making moving luggage an exercise in tedium. Normally, I would reduce such packing to a backpack, but as I was also bringing supplies to stock an apartment abroad, the trouble was worth it, though in the moment it did not make me a happy panda.

Somehow managing to balance my suitcase and boxes, I threw it all in a taxi and headed to the nearest hotel, (I believe) a Best Western. As luck would have it, they didn’t have a normal room available, and offered me a free upgrade to a pretty nice twin suite. I ordered some incredible Italian food from a restaurant connected to the hotel, grabbed my first shower in about 5 days (the downside of continuous train travel; some of the more expensive family-sized rooms came with showers, and I had access to one for the trip, but hadn’t packed any soap in my carry-on backpack), and fell into bed for the night.

I’m a little disappointed I didn’t have much time in Seattle – from what I saw on the train in (along the coast, offering what I think was my first view of the Pacific) and the day I was there, it seemed like an incredible place. Granted, the one day I was there it was a perfectly clear and sunny day, absent the infamous rain…but I’d definitely like to spend more time there. Nevertheless, morning came quickly, I rearranged my boxes back into my suitcase, grabbed a taxi to the train depot, and jumped on the bus.

The bus-ride was uneventful – met a nice Australian woman who had relocated to Vancouver who pointed out some landmarks on the way up. We stopped off at the Canadian border, where we stepped off the bus, reassured a border patrol guard that we weren’t a terrorist/smuggling/Satan, spent an hour or so standing around as they gave all our bags a good rubdown, then back on the bus and into Vancouver.

Things happened pretty quickly once we got there – as soon as we pulled into the bus depot, my new Australian friend ordered me a taxi to the harbor, where the boat was docked. I took off through the streets of Vancouver, and though I only spent a bus and taxi ride through it, it seemed pretty nice as well.

Got off in the harbor, where someone from the boat met me, grabbing my bags and rushing them off somewhere into the complex. While the boat was a cruise ship, I’d gotten a pretty incredible deal on a last minute cabin (I’d bought the ticket for the boat the week before I left, only two or three days before I had to leave on Amtrak) – and, being my first such trip, was surprised at the difference between heading to the boat and getting on, say, a plane. My bags were carted off to be scanned and processed into the boat, where they’d be delivered to my room, and I was left with a backpack to head off through security and name processing.

There were a few problems in the harbor itself – of the people I’ve known who’ve done Atlantic cruise/boat trips, nobody’s ever mentioned just how many people are on a particular ship. While I know that it’s usually a couple thousand – and figured that wouldn’t be bad, as I’d been to college football games with over 80,000 people – it’s quite another thing when there’s several cruise ships all processing people simultaneously, and all the people on these ships are put into two or three lines. It took an hour or two to get processed, though, which was impressive – as the longer-distance cruises tend to be filled with older people, I was surprised to see a number of people in their early-to-mid twenties lined up for the boat, though I soon found out most of them were only going to stay on for a day, as the boat’s first stop was back in Seattle.

Once processed, I received my magnetic roomkey/ID/wallet all-in-one beastcard, surrendered my passport to them until the boat arrived in Japan, and headed onto the boat.

Next time: Transpacific!

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