Riding the Rails, SoCal Style

The long and winding tracks...

For years, I've wanted to ride the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner from LA to San Diego, but there's never been a reason. With three kids, strollers, car seats, luggage, frequent snack and potty breaks, weird schedules, etc., it seemed as though taking my well-stocked Suburban (our family "train") was a better choice. Now that the girls are older (ages 8 to 12), our traveling has changed to include other options.

For example, Raf has been wanting/needing some time alone to surf, sit on the waves and not talk (a rare thing in our household). When we discussed taking our kids to San Diego for Thanksgiving, it made perfect sense for him to go a day ahead with his truck and get some well-deserved surfing in.

"And," I mentioned casually, "the girls and I can take the train down and meet you..."

Waiting for our train

This turned out to be much, much easier than I expected. For one thing, with a AAA discount, the fares were super reasonable - I bought the e-tickets online for about $100 for the four of us (as I understood it - and I could be wrong - I had to buy an adult ticket for my oldest child because you can only purchase 2 child fares with 1 adult). This is about the same price as a tank and a half of gas for my Suburban, so I felt like it was a great deal. I printed out our ticket and tucked it in my purse with my wallet and was good to go. 

The train station in Ventura County was super clean, with lots of safe, free parking (but no restrooms). Our train was running about 10 minutes behind, but it was a beautiful, sunny morning on a holiday week, so everyone at the platform was in pretty decent spirits. When the train arrived, the conductor greeted us cheerfully and directed us to a 4-seater area right at the top of the stairs. The next time I go, I'll be sure to grab a seat on the EAST/NORTH side of the train in Ventura County because, after the train links up to the other cars at Union Station, it goes BACKWARDS out of L.A. and then you'll wind up on the WEST side (make sense?). 

And then, my friends, you'll have a perfect view of the gorgeous beach real estate of South Orange County, including my favorite beach town of all time: San Clemente. Surfers, swimmers, beachcombers, families BBQ-ing and picnicking under the pier-adjacent palapas... It was the next best thing to being right there on the beach... 

And all without the stress of traffic and driving. I read my Kindle, laughed with the girls, and just stared out the window. I drive so much, I'd all but forgotten the simple joys of just watching the world go by as a passenger.

I lived in Italy as a teenager and train travel is a way of life there. But in our car-obsessed society, I found a joy in traveling on the Pacific Surfliner that reminded me of the glee of riding on "California Soaring" at Disney's California Adventure. It celebrates the beauty and scenery of our state.  Truly, there is no place like home, and the Pacific Surfliner is the train equivalent of Dorothy's sparkling ruby slippers.

My girls crowding the window to take pictures of surfers at Trestles.

The Journey

In recent years, I've found myself snapping quick self-portraits with my packed bags before I leave on a trip.  I'm not sure if it's the idea of capturing the moments BEFORE a life-changing trip that moves me, or the attempt to stop time before it speeds up, but it is like a reflex for me now.  I took this one before I left for Italy on Tuesday morning.


After leaving LA, I had a fabulous, easy flight to Philly, then a quick layover and another flight to Rome. Because it's the off season (I mean, really, why would anyone be traveling to Italy when it's cold and rainy???) and we had a ton of airline miles to use, I wrangled my way into getting first class seats for my trip.  It wasn't as though the aisles were paved with gold or I felt like a celebrity or anything cuckoo like that, but it was really a wonderful experience, starting with a complimentary glass of champagne as I sat down.  


Anyway, I'm telling you this because I was able to take advantage of that part of the journey being an end to itself.  I settled into my seat and watched a Glee marathon on my iPhone - seven episodes in a row, nearly a whole day's worth of show tunes and teen drama - happy as a clam.  It was sublime.  Just that - the ability to be a "captive audience" without distractions or phone or email or kids or anything - was such a gift. 


The second picture is from the 4th leg of my planes-trains-automobiles journey toward Cortona, taken as the train sped quickly away from the Roma Termini (main train station in Rome) toward Tuscany.  I had suddenly remembered the last time I was at the Roma Termini... I was 17 and going with a school trip from Naples to Paris.  We'd changed trains in Rome and, as the train left the station, I was making out with my boyfriend, the steel and chaos and noise of the trains and rails and travelers on the platforms fading rapidly as we raced away from Rome.  


I hadn't thought of that day for years, but now I sat on the train as a woman in her late 30s, wondering how life had wedged so much time and distance between that memory and the current scene. I wondered how it was that I could remember so well what it was like to be that girl on that long-ago train, could empathize with her insecurities and desire to be grown up already damn it, and yet be so far from her.  I thought of the book "A Wrinkle in Time" and the concept of time as a tesseract, a line that connects point A with point B in a nonlinear fashion; instead of being a long line between the two points, it is like a strand of yarn that dips down in the middle and the ends meet each other, so you don't need to cross the entire strand of time to get from one moment to another.  That's what I felt like, sitting on that train listening to Florence & the Machine's "The Dog Days are Over": like I was touching my hand through the window of time to the girl that I was the last time I was here. 


Even the first part of my journey illuminated the difference between now and then - the girl who would sometimes dodge the train conductor and get off the train as soon as it stopped rather than buy a cheap ticket and the woman who had enough airline miles to travel first-class and boarded a train with a pre-purchased rail ticket.  The dog days are over, indeed... but sometimes they are missed.  

Travel Days Suck

I love road trips, I do. And as much as I ascribe to the adage that "the journey *is* the destination," Raf and I have found that our travel days with the kids during this long voyage abroad generally suck.
For example, this is us post-check-out from the Hotel Neri in Barcelona yesterday morning, tooling around La Catedral to get to the taxi stop by Starbucks an hour before our train to Narbonne, en route to Toulouse in the South of France. We had to leave early, by 7:45 am, so we had to wake our kids up earlier than they'd had to wake up in Europe (after yet another midnight bedtime) and, worst of all, we didn't get a coffee at Starbucks because we figured there would be coffee at the train station (WRONG!).

Undercaffeinated and underfed, we somehow made it onto the train, where the sweet South African couple sitting behind Emme put their barefeet on the chairs... (This is Emme with the little green frog that has become the star of her pictures on this trip, appearing in front of landmarks like the gnome in those travel commercials.) Life improved somewhat when we discovered the dining car, where an older Spanish man would take an order, go around to the adjacent kitchen, make the toast/bocadillo/whatever, then make your coffee/drink order, then take your money... In that order, for each person. It was quite a lengthy process, but then again, we had a 3-hour tour...

In Narbonne, our train was delayed by a half-hour and literally no one speaks English (or at least, they didn't to us). We were taking a while to find the right car and heard a whistle and I realized that the train was gonna go, whether we were on or not, so Raf and I just pushed the kids on, threw our luggage on, and hopped aboard, hoping for the best. With my mastery of grammar school French (seriously limited), I was able to find our seats and enjoy the ride through vast sunflower fields.

Finally, in Toulouse, we found our way to the car rental office and then to Giant Burger, where we bought our kids a few Burger Max Country's and "churros" (oh my god, I ate one and I have no idea what the F is in it - not good, not quite a churro, not quite a french fry, not quite worth the box it came in). Surprisingly, the burgers were delicious, as was the salad. As Raf said, at least the French are a bit more "civilized" than Spaniards, offering a better food selection at their train stations.

There's not a lot more to tell about the rest of the trip to Floure (a small village about an hour from Toulouse, which even the rental car lady hadn't heard of), and I'll refrain from detailing the mini-hissy I nearly threw (but didn't) when we found our rental Mercedes and it was incredibly dirty and in dire need of a car wash (REALLY! Civilized??), but we are now in the South of France. With all that it took to get here, I am glad we are not doing anything for the next few days except swimming, eating cheese, drinking wine, watching movies on my laptop and listening to the bees buzz.

Ahh... la vie en rose.