By rail to New York

Our train took us through the night and following day between Chicago and New York, across five states - Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvannia and finally New York. It ran along the shores of Lakes Michigan and Erie, before cutting across New York State alongside the Erie Canal and then down the Hudson River Valley into New York City.

Our sleeping cabin was cute and comfortable enough, and it was nice to not have to do very much for a whole day. We were also glad to have the compartment, as thorugh we had checked our suitcases (four) we had plenty of room for the rest of our luggage. We discovered, slightly to our chagrin, that several other couples on the train were also taking the boat as part of a package trip, which made us feel somewhat less original than we'd been believing ourselves. However, were at least 20 years younger than anyone else in the sleeping cars (rather than all night seats), and most definitely the only ones emigrating, so we're still fairly special!

Capitol Alert:  Not the clearest photo ever, but our fourth Capitol Building this trip, in Albany, New York.

Bridge Alert: We got a good view of the Tappen Zee Bridge over the Hudson on our way in.  It was built over one of the widest points on the river, 3 miles wide, rather than a much narrower point a few miles further south, so that it was outside of the Port Authority jurisdictiondue to a dispute between the Port Authority and the State of New York. How Red Tape changed the world.

As our rail journey came to an end, with a few twists and bumps, and a trip down a long dark tunnel, we arrived into New York’s Penn Station to disembark, gather our bags (after a 30 minute wait) and emerge out onto 7^th Avenue like two people who had way too much stuff to carry. Luckily, our hotel was only a few short blocks away from the station, in the shadow of the Empire State Building. We abandoned our things in our room (which was no bigger than a wigwam, but certainly more expensive!) and headed out into the night.

For dinner, we felt local fare would be best, so Selina had New York style pizza and I had New York style hotdog. They called it a 15-bite hotdog, but frankly I lost count after 20. Juniper sour kraut is definitely the way to go, however.

Following that, we wandered around Times Square, which is a hive of tourists and street vendors as you might expect, and it’s almost as bright as daylight, no matter what the actual time is. From there we walked up a few more blocks to the Rockefeller Center.

I had never been before, but The Rock has a great rooftop observatory at it, giving us impressive views of the night time city skyline, especially of the Empire State Building. Better yet, there was no line at 10:45pm, so we zoomed right up to the roof.

The evening view from the Top of the Rock

Heading back to our hotel we went to sleep (in the city that never sleeps) in our 20^th consecutive different bed.  It’s quite odd not to be moving on today to another place – this will be our second day in the same place for the first time after 20 consecutive nights in different places.