I’ve moved my blog. If you go www.writerondeck.com you can follow on my latest cruise, Grand Asia 2018. You also can subscribe via email there.
Here’s a peak at my latest post:
Friday, Sept. 28, 2018, Chicago:
Just Waiting to Move to My Next Home
Today is my last day in Chicago until Christmas. Tomorrow I fly to Los Angeles before boarding the MS Amsterdam on Sunday for the Grand Asia 2018 cruise.
I’m eager to get on the “dam” ship already. Waiting isn’t fun.
Read the whole story at Writer on Deck.
Day -13, Grand Asia 2018
Monday, Sept. 17, 2018 — Chicago
I’ve done something crazy two weeks before my big Grand Asia cruise. I decided to move my travel blog. I’m busy tweaking the new blog, but perhaps the bigger challenge is to get all of you, my followers, to move to the new site. I hope new features will make it worth your time.
The new site is www.writerondeck.com.
Your assignment is to go to the new site and subscribe.
- If you are using a smartphone, go to writerondeck.com, scroll down past the recent blog entries until you see “Subscribe via Email. Post your email address and follow directions so you will get each blog post in your email.
- On a desktop computer, go to writerondeck.com, and you will find the Subscribe via Email box on the sidebar to the right. Enter your email address and follow the instructions.
I will post the next few blog entries on this site as well as the new one, but eventually will close WoodenShoeSailing. So please move with me to Writer on Deck.
Day -31, Grand Asia 2018
Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018 — Chicago
How do you plan visits to 33 ports in 15 countries spread across the Pacific Ring of Fire? It can be as easy or as complex as you want.
The easy route is to sign up for the cruise line’s excursions. Holland America sent us a four-color 113-page book of tours in every port, which gives me an idea of what is most popular to see and do. I can read more, check prices and sign up on their website.
The more complex option is to research ports, independent tour operators and other possibilities online. Trip Advisor is a good place to start. I also look at blogs by other travelers and at websites such as the Ports of Call section of Cruise Critic’s forum. I met people on this cruise last year who had whole binders tabbed with information on every port.
Last year I planned for months. This year I’ve left it until almost the last minute. Of course, I didn’t sign up for the cruise until a few weeks ago. For the past few days I have worked my way through each port, taking a country or section at a time.
I blogged before about differences in ship and independent touring and some of the choices I made last year.
This year I plan to take a few ship tours. One will take me to a vulcanology museum in Petropavlovsk, Russia, on the Kamchatka Peninsula. My Russian visa from independent travel years earlier in Saint Petersburg and Moscow has expired, and it just seems easier to go along with a ship tour this time. In Taiwan, I think I will take a ship excursion that takes us to the original Din Tai Fung, where we will learn to make Taiwanese soup noodles. Just like Tom Cruise did when in Taipei. It’s not something I could easily plan on my own.
In other ports, I want a customized experience that the cruise line doesn’t offer. For example, Fukuoka, Japan, is known for the street food stalls called yatai that are disappearing throughout the country. So a group of us are planning an independent yatai crawl while there.
Sometimes the ship excursions are too limited. All of the tours to Beijing visit the same places we visited last year (Great Wall, Forbidden Palace, Temple of Heaven). Surely there are other things to see in a city of more than 20 million people. I guess we will need to find them on our own.
I am much more confident this year exploring some ports on my own after getting the “lay of the land” last year. In others, I have joined with a couple of friends who also are repeating the cruise this year to hire a driver to take us to specific sites or activities.
Meanwhile, I also am making lists of what to pack. More about that in a future post.
Day -68, Grand Asia 2018
Tuesday, July 24, 2018 — Chicago
Perhaps I have lost my mind, but I’ve just signed up for Holland America’s 2018 Grand Asia cruise that leaves this fall. As readers may remember, I sailed on this cruise last year and blogged daily. The cruise has expanded to 82 days, skips New Zealand and adds Taiwan, Okinawa and more South Pacific islands.
I know I said last year’s 80-day Grand Asia cruise was my “cruise of a lifetime.” I guess it was just my “cruise of 2017.”
Why am I taking this cruise again? A confluence of factors:
- I’ve spent the last month editing my 80 blog posts from last year’s Grand Asia cruise into text for a series of photo books. It’s left me feeling nostalgic for the countries we visited, the leisurely days at sea and the friends I made aboard the MS Amsterdam.
- I took my introduction to watercolor on last year’s cruise to heart and have expanded into urban sketching. In fact, I’m taking an intensive course in it at the Art Institute of Chicago next week. My goal is to document my travels by sketching and water coloring along the way. I just needed the right trip – and this is it.
- When Joyce texted me that she was thinking about going on the cruise again this year, I decided the signs were piling up. We met on a 2011 cruise, and I talked her into going on last year’s Grand Asia. (It didn’t take a lot of persuasion.) Once I checked the roll call on Cruise Critic for this fall’s Grand Asia cruise, I saw another half-dozen friends I met last year. Now it’s a reunion!
- Holland America was offering a good flash sale for a guaranteed cabin (they will assign me a cabin later) and my Chinese visa is still good. I didn’t have any travel planned for the fall, other than returning to Dallas from Chicago when the weather turns cold.
So when I go to Dallas in August for doctor appointments and some business, I will need to return to Chicago packed with everything I will need on the cruise.
Meanwhile I am researching new ports and new things to do in ports I already have visited. Holland America has some shore excursions posted, and my fellow Cruise Critic members are busy organizing private tours. Joyce and I agree we want to do more food tours this time around. And of course I want to make time for sketching.
Another challenge will be figuring how to vote absentee. I may need to stop in a U.S. embassy along the way to submit my ballot. We’ll see what Texas has to say about the particulars.
I know there are dozens more details that need attention, so I will be busy for the next couple of months. I’ll fill you in as I prepare.
The romance of the rails drew me to traveling through the American West on Amtrak. I saw the country as I imagined the pioneers saw it – miles upon miles of grasslands, great river crossings, mountain ranges and canyons. I traveled in style, sleeping in my own small compartment, eating meals in the dining car, joining conversations in the observation lounge.
Today’s Amtrak travel doesn’t evoke the romance of vintage train posters, but it does deliver scenic travel at a different pace. You see fly-over country up close, without focusing on traffic.
I dreamt of this epic trip “someday” but realized that if I put it off too long, someday might never come. Amtrak’s cross-country routes are not moneymakers on their own, and the rumors of limiting the national railway to the Northeast Corridor commuter lines continues. Never mind that highways and airports are not moneymakers either – they all require huge government subsidies. But Amtrak seems the most threatened, so this was the year for my trip.
I’m glad I scratched this itch to travel the American West by train. Will I do it again? Maybe not, as there are so many places and means of travel that interest me.
In preparation for the trip, I became a member of the Facebook group Amtrak Fans. It is a good place to learn the tips and tricks of Amtrak travel. As you might expect from a group of Amtrak enthusiasts, it also is a trove of rumors about the future of the rail system.
The new AMTRAK CEO, Richard Anderson, is the catalyst for many of the group members’ concern for Amtrak’s future. The conspiracy-minded wonder if Anderson, a retired CEO of Delta Airlines, is intent on eliminating long-distance rail competition to airlines.
Actions such as the recently announced elimination of dining cars on two routes (substituting “new and contemporary dining” a la prepackaged meals requiring no preparation) leave many of us wondering if Anderson has spent any time traveling the long-distance routes himself.
I suggest he quietly and anonymously book one of the Chicago-West Coast routes, sleeping in a roomette and dining community-style with other passengers. I believe he would discover, as I have, that the romance of train travel isn’t simply in getting from here to there, but rather in the social experience of crossing the country. It would give him a whole new perspective.
Meanwhile, if you have any interest in American train travel, plan your trip while you can. And write your Member of Congress expressing support for Amtrak.
Even though this was my sixth and final Amtrak leg of this trip, I “achieved” several firsts on it.
The train’s arrival was the first time I experienced a significant delay. It also was the first time I had a scheduled layover of several hours between two trains. It would be my first night in a roomette in a “transition” car that is shared by crewmembers, and it was my first time in an older-style Superliner 1 car. I thought this would be my first train trip through hours of rain, but the forecasted storm held off until we almost reached Dallas.
Every Amtrak crewmember I have met on this journey has worked hard to make sure passengers have a comfortable journey. They proved themselves again my final night when my train from St. Louis to Dallas was running almost two hours late. Despite it being after normal dinner hours, they kept the dining room open for the five of us in sleeping accommodations (and thus with meals included).
I already had an early dinner in St. Louis, so I limited my “meal” to a gin and tonic with a cheesecake chaser. Both couples were heading to Houston; one would depart in Longview for a connecting Amtrak bus and the other would stay on to San Antonio and then connect to the Sunset Limited east to Houston.
By the time I returned to my sleeper my attendant had made my bed in the transition car. I had read about some disadvantages – further from the dining and lounge cars and sometimes with spotty service. On this train there was only one sleeping car between the dining room and my car, so the distance was no problem. And my attendant was as attentive as any. The transition car did live up to its reported advantage of being quiet. It was rare than anyone passed by.
My cabin had an open area to hang a jacket or coat, as opposed to an enclosed tiny closet on a newer car. And the shelves to the side of the bed, which double as stairs to the upper bunk, were more open. Both features made it easier to store then small amount of things I carried with me. The bathroom down the hall included a small shower, while the newer cars have a separate shower downstairs. Or that could be a difference in a regular sleeper and a transition car. Either way it didn’t matter to me, as I’ll shower at home later today.
At breakfast I sat with a woman who travels the rails quite frequently, despite being retired with flying privileges from an airline. She has taken most of the routes throughout the west several times. She also is active, as I have become, in a Facebook group for Amtrak fans. It’s a great place to learn a lot about Amtrak travel.
Once again, I slept as the train passed through my father’s hometown of Newport, Ark. (too small for a stop). When we passed through Hope, Ark., the conductor pointed out Bill Clinton’s home, which was not the brick house with the sign, but the white house behind it.
Two and half weeks after leaving from Dallas Union Station, I had returned. I took the DART light rail train to my suburb of Plano, where it was much cheaper to catch an Uber back home.
I’ll summarize the trip in a later blog. I hope you have enjoyed going along on this “land cruise.”
My host in Kansas City for three days, Ginzy, isn’t a morning person, so I grabbed an Uber to Union Station to begin my shortest Amtrak journey of the trip – the Missouri River Runner. It travels between Kansas City and St. Louis, where I will join the Texas Eagle tonight for the final leg home to Dallas.
I’ve interrupted this two-and-a-half week trip with three stops of three days each. I’ve met fellow train travelers who are connecting with as few layovers as possible, circling the American west in six days. I wanted to break up this trip and visit friends along the way.
First I stopped in Chicago for three days after the overnight Texas Eagle from Dallas. My sister Elaine flew up to meet me and to see her son (my nephew) who attends the University of Illinois – Chicago. Sometime next week I will drive back to Chicago to spend the summer in an apartment I have rented there, but it was nice to spend a few days in the city to begin the trip.
Next it was on the California Zephyr overnight to Denver. My friend Martha moved to Castle Rock, a suburb south of town, last year, and I got to see her and her new house. We explored the area, had dinner with another friend, Timi, and day-tripped to Colorado Springs and to Red Rocks and Evergreen. I also made use of Martha’s laundry.
The Zephyr leaves Denver early, but we got to Union Station early enough to have another breakfast at Snooze in the station. Their blueberry Danish pancakes were worth the early alarm. And the Zephyr from Denver to California was the most scenic train journey I have taken.
I didn’t plan any visits while in California – just spent one night in Emeryville outside San Francisco and another in Los Angeles (read about it here). Then it was a two-night train journey on the Southwest Chief to Kansas City, where I lived during high school and in my 20s.
Three days was not enough to visit all my friends there, but I saw several and went to some fun restaurants. We even caught a good movie, Finding Your Feet, and visited the Truman Library. I hadn’t been there in decades, since I was editor of the Independence Examiner. And of course I did another load of laundry.
The Missouri River Runner leaves Kansas City twice a day and takes about six hours to cross the state. The first part of the journey is through farmland. We joined the Missouri River in Jefferson City as we passed just in front of the capital and the state penitentiary. Then we followed the river almost all the way to St. Louis, where we arrived in early afternoon.
The Texas Eagle wasn’t scheduled to leave St. Louis until nearly 8 p.m., so I spent a couple of hours relaxing in the first-class lounge of the St. Louis Gateway Terminal. It is pretty basic, but was quiet and offered bottled water. Friends Arthur and Gayla picked me up for nice tour through the city before we had an early dinner. They dropped me back at the station before going on to a St. Louis Symphony performance. Alas, the Texas Eagle was running a couple of hours late, but the time passed quickly in the lounge.
One more day and my journey will end. It’s been great fun to mix such a scenic trip with great visits with good friends.
I’ve seen a lot of beautiful scenery on this train journey, but today I saw my first wildlife. A herd of elk grazed in the meadow near the track as we were about to leave northeast New Mexico for Colorado. Not just a handful of elk, but perhaps 40 or 50.
This segment on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief started at 6 p.m. in Los Angeles at Union Station. The dining car was ready to feed us as soon as we boarded, and most people retired fairly early to their roomettes for the night. I did not sleep as well as on previous legs of the trip. Either this track or this train car was at fault – the entire journey was notably jerkier than my previous segments.
We passed through much of California and Arizona during the night. In the morning we were in the desert Southwest.
The train stopped in Albuquerque for almost an hour to take on more fuel. It was a good opportunity to get off and stretch my legs. After taking a photo of some interesting characters, I walked over to the adobe transportation building and did a quick sketch. I’m not very good, but I like to practice. It’s impossible for me to sketch on the moving train.
The afternoon was leisurely, and I alternated between watching the desert scenery change into more hills and trees and watching some Netflix videos. At one point we pulled over to allow the Southwest Chief traveling in the opposite direction to pass. We both were going slow enough to actually see into the other train.
During my meals, I met more interesting passengers. I’ve been collecting their stories about why they are taking the train, especially the long trips across the American west. On this trip, one retired architect from Chicago said he has developed asthma and his doctor suggested he not fly. So he had taken the train to visit family in California and his wife flew. He enjoyed the train, he said. A woman said she was traveling by train for medical reasons as well – she couldn’t “pop” her ears to compensate for air pressure changes when flying.
One passenger said he didn’t want to fly – or rather he didn’t want to crash. He figured a train accident was less likely to be fatal than an airplane. But some people were like me and decided to take a train vacation across the country. Stops to visit friends in Chicago, Denver and Kansas City are interrupting my trip. Others are just connecting and immediately moving on.
We approached the New Mexico-Colorado state line at dusk, and the conductor told us to watch for wildlife. I had my nose glued to the roomette window, and suddenly saw the large herd. Initially I couldn’t tell if they were horses or elk, but the conductor confirmed the elk identification. I quickly snapped off several photos – the elk were spread through the meadow as if to help give me time to take the shots. They ignored the train as it passed. By bedtime, we had crossed into Kansas.
The train arrived into Kansas City before 7 a.m., and I gathered my belongings and left to visit friends in town and eat at some of my favorite restaurants. I’ll be here three days and then leave on the last of my journey, to St. Louis and the connection back home to Dallas.
When I realized that I would almost 24 hours in Los Angeles before my next train left, I decided to follow a suggestion from Trip Advisor and take a food tour. The Six Taste walking food tour is top rated, and they have a Sunday tour in downtown LA from 11 am to 3 pm – perfect for my 6:10 p.m. departure.
The tour started at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, which was why I decided to stay there the night before. Most of the 15 tour participants were from the LA area, but others were from as far away as Rhode Island. Monica met us and gave a brief tour of the hotel. Then we set off for Grand Central Market. “Food court” doesn’t do it justice. It has a large variety of produce stands and food stalls. The Sunday brunch line to Eggslut surrounded the entire section.
Wouldn’t you know that our first stop was at Horse Thief BBQ, a restaurant started by two Texans to feature smoked meats of central Texas. Everyone in the tour group looked to me as the Texan on the tour for a report on its authenticity. I gave it a thumb’s up.
Next we admired the lobby of the Bradbury building, known for its ornate ironwork stairs, featured in Blade Runner among other movies.
Just a block or two away was Maccheroni Republic, where we sat on a shaded outdoor patio and enjoyed two excellent pasta dishes and warm crusty bread. Apparently, you can eat here with your dog on your lap, too.
We toured The Last Bookstore, a labyrinth of an independent bookstore. It would be easy to spend an entire Sunday afternoon there and become lost in the process. It’s a delightful place that doesn’t take itself too seriously. You really should visit it.
In the Spring Arcade Building at the Green Grotto Juice Bar, we had Jamaican patties, with beef baked inside dough much like an empanada. That spicy bite was followed with wonderful gelato at Gelateria Uli for a palate cleanser.
We took a swing through the historic Clifton’s cafeteria (you step back in time) and headed for Chica’s Tacos, a small stand with a covered seating area in the parking lot. My beer-battered-fish taco covered with salad was one of the best I have had.
Our final stop was at Bottega Louie, which Monica said is one of the busiest and most profitable restaurants in the city. We sampled their macarons, which were the perfect finale for the tour, which I highly recommend if you are in LA. They offer a variety of tours.
I still had time to relax in the Biltmore’s Rendezvous Court and check in with my sisters before heading to Union Station for the Southwest Chief, which left just after 6 p.m. Amtrak’s Metropolitan Lounge in LA doesn’t measure up to its newly refurbished cousin in Chicago, but it is still a nice place to relax until it is time to board.
After another good dinner on board, I watched a couple of episodes of Grand Prix Driver, a documentary on Amazon Prime about McLaren’s 2017 Formula One preparation, and went to bed. This will be my only two-night leg on this Amtrak journey.
The last time I rode in the coach section of Amtrak was for seven hours from Chicago to Kansas City a year ago. I watched videos the whole way, as there wasn’t a lot of stunning scenery.
This time I spent about 12 hours on the Coast Starlight, from Emeryville (near Oakland) to Los Angeles. I didn’t watch videos.
For the first hour or so, we passed through commercial and residential areas. I could see a number of backyard pools mere yards from my train window. It was fun to open my Realtor.com app and check the prices of properties on the market in the areas we passed by. In some places, you can pay almost $1 million to have Amtrak passengers watch you swim.
We next rolled into farmland, and I could see why so much of our produce comes from California. Many crops had just been planted, and workers were preparing other fields. I couldn’t identify all of the plantings, but I knew grape vines when I saw them.
We gradually moved into more hills. During our brief stop in Salinas, we had a few minutes to explore a farmer’s market and fair at the depot. I couldn’t resist a bag of kettle corn. By mid afternoon we had left the produce farms behind and entered what looked like cattle country and rolling green hills north of San Luis Obispo. I was surprised at the number of tunnels.
The highlight came in late afternoon, when we finally reached the Pacific Ocean. For about 30 minutes, it teased us with a glimpse or two now and again, just out of reach. And then the tracks took us almost to the ocean’s edge, following a bluff for miles and miles of just crashing waves and the train. I couldn’t believe that in California, where land is so expensive and cherished, we spent more than an hour traveling through an undeveloped area on the Pacific Ocean. I suppose the nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base had something to do with it. The views were stunning and went on and on.
In Santa Barbara houses appeared in the small space between the train tracks and the water, and by Ventura we had seen hundreds of campers pulled over by the beaches. From there, it was probably two more hours through the sprawling metropolitan area to Los Angeles’ Union Station.
I had a short Uber ride to my downtown hotel, the legendary Biltmore. It hosted the early years of the Academy Awards. My room looked out on a brick wall, but I didn’t mind. I had a night of luxury.
A few notes about the logistics of my trip on the Coast Starlight. By getting on in Emeryville, I got to choose any seat in a sparsely filled business class car, so I grabbed a window seat on what would be the ocean side (right side going south). The next stop was Oakland, and a lot of people boarded there. Several did not get the window seats they wanted. I was glad I boarded one stop earlier.
Because this was a day trip, I booked a business class seat. It wasn’t too different from a coach seat. I got two bottles of water and a $6 voucher for food. I went to the dining car for lunch and dinner, which wasn’t included in the ticket price. In retrospect, it probably wouldn’t have cost much more to book a roomette for the day with meals included.
The business and coach seats on Amtrak put airline seating to shame. There is a lot of room between the rows, and your seat not only reclines, but also has leg support and a footrest. There are two power outlets for each pair of seats. I didn’t mind the business class car, but next time I would check the roomette prices, too.
Wooden Shoe Sailing 