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DH has requested that I look into a long distance train trip for one if our vacations next year. The kind where you skeep, eat, etc on the train. I've done overnights in sleeping berths on trains in the UK and Russia, but that's not what I think he is referring to.
Anyone have any ideas or experienced this kind of trip. Yes, I will google it myself, so I'm only looking for personal experiences or knowledge gained from famiky, friends, etc.
Please suggest to DH that sleeper trains, even the best of them, can be nightmares. If he's thinking about the Orient Express, for instance, I have a bedbug story that will knock the romance right out of that particular trip.
(It was so bad, that when we finally got home, we stripped naked in front of our front door and only THEN entered the house. We then burned all of our travel clothes and our bags.) It has been my experience that train travel is no longer anything like a Paul Theroux book. Either that, or Paul never mentioned the food poisoning and vermin. Because I've read all of his books.
To answer your question: My two favorite scenic train trips are the slow-train up the Rhine River in Germany and the train from Innsbruck to Venice through the Dolomites.
I like that Lewis & Clarke adventure but holy cow, pricey!
There are a few I really like and Lewis and Clark is one of them.
The shocker of the pricing wears off a bit when you realize the cost of the train, meals and hotels for some nights plus whatever tours are included
The California Zephyr is a standard Amtrak rout between Emryville, CA and Chicago, Il., so it's a bit more affordable (and bookable) but still gets a little prohibitive if you're looking for a deluxe sleeper the whole way. It is amtrak's longest route at 2,438 miles (3,924 km), so it will certainly fit your duration desires, especially if you connect to other destinations from there. It also has some decent scenery, but not as much as you may think, since it's traveling mainly through high desert and plains through a saddle that manages to bypass most of the more typically rugged Rocky Mountain high country passes in CO and WY.
Another option would be Amtrak's Coast Starlight which travels daily between Los Angeles and Seattle, some of it (but not a lot) is along the coast. It's overnight at best though, so if you're looking for a very long trip, that's not it.
If you don't mind skipping the multi-day thing, and substituting that with some truly fantastic scenery and historical essence, consider the Durango-Silverton narrow gauge railroad in western CO. Truly a spectacular ride, it's just 45 miles 1-way but will take several hours as a round trip because it's slow going and has to stop to water-up. CO has several other working 'historical' rail lines which may be worth a look if you don't mind some shorter, more tourist-friendly routes.
Please suggest to DH that sleeper trains, even the best of them, can be nightmares. If he's thinking about the Orient Express, for instance, I have a bedbug story that will knock the romance right out of that particular trip.
(It was so bad, that when we finally got home, we stripped naked in front of our front door and only THEN entered the house. We then burned all of our travel clothes and our bags.) It has been my experience that train travel is no longer anything like a Paul Theroux book. Either that, or Paul never mentioned the food poisoning and vermin. Because I've read all of his books.
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Hey ScoopLV, could you tell me more about the bedbugs? I posted something on another forum about my own bad experience on The Vermonter, and some other fellow was talking about bedbugs (on a different train, with a sleeper), and boy oh boy, the folks on that forum told him that bedbugs were virtually unheard of on Amtrak.
I didn't believe it myself.
The train we were on was filthy beyond all description. The Amtrak bathroom literally had puddles of urine on the floor, with wads of used toilet paper scattered about - and that was in the Business Class section!
I have heard the train trip from the Northeast of the USA to Montreal, Canada is very scenic especially during the fall season.
I've taken the train from NYC to Montreal and would agree that it's very scenic, particularly as it rides along the Hudson downstate, and then from Saratoga north Upstate.
It only takes a day (unless it's delayed) but you could easily route from Portland to NYC then change for the NYC to Montreal train. Except a few grimy urban areas, there are nice views on both of those routes.
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