Megan Singleton: BloggerAtLarge.com writer on her Boston to New York experience

Megan's been exploring the US, and she's unveiling her travel hacks for getting around on the trains.

She recently took the train from Boston to New York, and she weighed up the pros and cons of getting around the US on the train.

Read more about Megan's experiences here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
It is time to talk travel and joining us now
is Megan Singleton. Good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
I wasn't on the midnight train, but I could have been.
I found out from Boston you can get the train
to New Orleans in thirty five hours.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Oh yeah, I've done thirty hour train trips in China before.
It's a substantial amount of time unless you've got very
good you.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Know, sleeper cabin sleeping yeah, yea and things.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
But look, tell me about this trip, because you trained
from Boston to New York.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah, so it took about four hours. We could have
flown in about an hour and a half. But you
know the difference between flying from say Boston to New
York and getting the train is that you don't have
to check in two three hours before your flight. In fact,
only fifteen minutes before departure did they tell you what
platform to be on. And you also arrive right in

(01:05):
the heart of Manhattan, so there's no great big one
hour you know, taxi kerfuffles trying to get through to
the hotel so I And also it was really cheap.
I've been watching the Amtrak website for weeks and the
fears had been fluctuating from two hundred dollars a seat
to sixty dollars. And that's what we paid, so sixty
dollars each to get four hour train journey from Boston

(01:27):
to New York. And it was really fun. We enjoyed it,
and I'd totally recommend it.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Why does that price fluctuate so much? Demand?

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah, demand, and they have some different trains, so we
took the Ascilia. I don't know, there's a business We
could have gone business class and paid like seventy five dollars.
I was too tight to do that. I don't know
why it fluctuates. It's just it's just one of those things.
So that's and often flights do too, right. So that's
why I'm always a fan of checking sites like skyscanneral,

(01:58):
putting in an alert for your destination and you'll get
an email when the flights have dropped, and maybe that's
when you should book so little, just a little.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Is it a picturesque train trip?

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Well?

Speaker 3 (02:10):
It is. So the tip was get on at South
Station in Boston. That's the first station you don't get
seat numbers, so I read on these Facebook groups of Boston.
Sit on the left, and then you can watch Connecticut
roll by and it's beautiful. So we sort of chug
out through town and it's not very beautiful, but then
you get to these lovely what are they not lagoons,

(02:32):
but they're off the ocean, but they're surrounded by this
beautiful houses and still calm waters and it was autumn
leaves and it was just so quintessential Connecticut, really beautiful.
But by the time you come into New York, the
skyline is going to be on your right, so at
that point the train will be full because it stops
at stations all the way along, so you have to

(02:53):
pick your choice. But I'd say sit on the left,
watch Connecticut roll by, and there's a food car on board,
so you can take you can take food and things
like that, but you can also buy it on board.
There was free wife and then we arrived into crazy,
hectic Penn station in the middle of Manhattan. We hailed

(03:14):
a cab from outside of the Madison Square Garden Taxiq
and went straight to our hotel on the Lower East Side,
and it was a really good time.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
All sorted. I love it. Thank you so much, Megan Meghan.
We'll get her blogs up at blog at large dot
com if you're planning a trip to the US.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks the b from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.