Big day today! We both crashed really early last night - must’ve needed it. Got up this morning and headed down to brekkie at the hotel restaurant.

I gotta hand it to the Omni Parker House. The hotel drips with old-school opulence and glamour, but it never feels stuffy nor pretentious. T-shirt and sandals at brekkie, even with the chandeliers, linen, and silver coffee server? No worries. Rob got blueberry pancakes and I had the corned beef hash.

I love corned beef hash - and this was really tasty, but strange. I’m not a CBH snob, either. Some of my favourite ones come from a can. But this one had no potatoes in it. Can you even call it ‘hash’ without potatoes? Strange. It was tasty, though.

Checked out of the hotel and hopped a short Uber ride to Boston South Station to catch our train.

The interior has been modernized, which I suppose is necessary, but kind of a letdown after the gorgeous exterior.

I checked the tote board to see if we had a track assignment yet. It says our train is bound for Washington(!) Our tickets say New York. Normally, I’d just chalk it up to a mistake on the tote board, but considering my only other trip on an Amtrak train (Houston to Los Angeles) arrived 29 hours late, I think I’ll pop into the ticket office and make sure everything is OK… be right back.

All good. Washington is the final stop on the journey, so that’s what they put on the board. It also shows “on time” which is shocking. On the aforementioned Hou-LA trip, we showed up at the station to board the train at 9:30pm. It showed up at 3am and the lady there said, “oh, not too bad, then.”

Satisfied that we were going to get on the right train, I checked off another “place food” on my list by having a Boston cream donut in Boston.

I got the donut (and a coffee) from Dunkin’ which is to the northeast US as Tim Hortons is to Canada. Basically, it’s mediocre coffee and nothing-special donuts, but the locals treat it like it’s the best thing ever… and when they’re away from home, they crave it. Personally, I fall into the category of “Canadians who need their Tims fix” so I can’t really talk smack about those who gotta have their Dunkin’ but the coffee there is really boring.

Before long, our train showed up and we walked the length of the platform to the business class car. For a commuter train, it was looooooong.

This would be our home for the next 4.5 hours. There was a lot of legroom, which was a welcome surprise, and wifi on board, which is how I’m writing this now.

Just an FYI for anyone considering a train journey, know this: they never put the nice parts of town next to the railroad tracks. Quite a lot of the scenery was countryside, so that helped. We were serenaded for more than an hour with the dulcet tones of this Amtrak employee snoring like a jackhammer.

At about the four-hour mark, the city came into view.

We arrived at Penn station, which is across the street from Madison Square Garden. From there, we hoofed it 14 blocks to the hotel. This is NYC. By the time we got a taxi and the taxi got through traffic to the hotel, we could’ve already walked it.

The Empire State Building posed for us at one intersection.

Times Square was Times Square-ing.

New York City is in my top ten favourite cities, but it’s not in the top half. Rob, on the other hand, steps into the street from the train station and has a look on his face that is unmistakable. It’s the same look when I step into the street in Copenhagen or Cape Town. You look around, your heart swells, and in your mind, you hear yourself say, “I fucking love this city!”

New York City has its own vibe. It doesn’t feel like any other big city. It’s crowded, vibrant, noisy, artistic, hectic, eclectic, bombastic, erotic, gritty, playful, hard, esoteric, overwhelming …. and it’s all of those things at the same time. It’s a lot to handle and you can either tackle it head-on, revelling in the challenge, or the city will eat you alive and spit out the bones.

Unfortunately, I was in that latter category today. I forget sometimes that my body simply cannot do what it used to do. Had we made that 14-block walk, dragging heavy suitcases at the beginning of this trip, I’d have probably been fine. But on day nineteen of the trip, after a whole day of travel, it nearly killed me. I collapsed on the bed as soon as we got to our room, freezing cold (the room temp was fine), and went to sleep almost immediately. For dinner, we went down to the hotel lounge and I had lots of water, a martini, and a chicken caesar salad. Rob had fried artichoke bites, which he said were delicious.

How wiped out was I? Pete and Bas dropped a 30-second teaser for their new song, which is a collaboration with singer Olly Murs (told ya!) and I glanced over it once. ONCE. And now that I’ve finished writing this post, I’m hitting the sack. I don’t care if it’s not even 9pm yet.

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