Yesterday we headed out of Madison on the Van Guilder bus to the Chicago Amtrak train station. Arriving a bit early at the station, we played a two person version of Settlers and snacked on our lunchables. After lugging our luggage up to the upper deck of the train for our roomy coach seats, we snuggled into our home for the next day.
Overall it took 29 hours to reach Texas, leaving a bit late from the station (Sat at 4pm) and arriving hours late to Austin, TX (Sun at 9pm). While riding trains in America is incomparable to riding in Europe, we were happy not to have to spend 20 hours driving on the road. In our roomy seats I finished 2 novels, ate two impressively good microwaved pizzas, played Razzia and had a delicious hot sandwich. The bathrooms were a bit more roomy than those on an airplane, but not by much.
As we were pulling into Austin, we went through Round Rock and under the bat bridge. We were very happy to stand up and get off the train once we arrived and happily ate the delicious sandwiches Mom and Dad brought. While we didn't sleep well with the rocking of the train, we weren't exhausted when we arrived and sure slept well that night!
