Sheila picked up Lukey and Kenzie the night before our trip to Manhattan was to begin. Kenzie had a figure skating lesson at a rink about a half hour from our house so Sheila picked them up at the rink while I stayed at home and cooked dinner.
I often seem to be cooking dinner when the grandkids arrive and hear the same comments as they walk in the door... "It smells so good in here!", followed by "It always smells good at Gee and Papa's house!" This night was no different. I was baking a smoked and glazed ham, garlic mashed potatoes and maple glazed carrots. Dinner was pretty good.
We packed, watched an episode of "Only Murders in the Building" (Lukey and Kenzie's favorite at the moment... and, one of Gee and Papa's favorites too), and then went to bed.
In the morning we packed up the car in the pouring rain and headed down to the train station a few minutes earlier than planned so we could eat breakfast at the cafe in the train station.On the way down to the station, we noticed that the rivers and streams were getting awfully close to the level of the roadways. We knew this was not a good sign but we were still hopeful that the train could stay ahead of any potential flooding. The water was awfully high already though.
We had breakfast in the little cafe in the train station... meh, I didn't care for it and it left me with a bit of a stomach ache. I won't be doing that again. After breakfast, we went over to the waiting room side of the station to wait for the train. At this point, the train had left St Albans, Vermont on time so we were still hopeful of having a very pleasant ride to Manhattan on Amtrak. The fact that the train was on its way was a very good sign. Quite often since the July flooding, the train did not run at all so leaving St Albans was a good sign and our spirits were up.
Within a few minutes, an Amtrak Station Attendant came into the waiting room to announce that our train had stopped at Essex Junction and was not proceeding any farther due to flooding. We asked about buses but he was not particularly convincing that he had any hopes of Amtrak being able to send a bus to pick us up. Still, he said he was still waiting to hear from Amtrak and that he would keep us posted.
At this point, I was weighing the pros and cons in my head. Sheila was probably doing the same while the kids were clearly disappointed and deflated. I had already quickly decided that a bus was not the way to get to Manhattan but I was holding my tongue while the news sank in for the rest of my party.
There were multiple issues with riding a bus down to Manhattan from northern Vermont...- There would be no Cafe car for purchasing food and drinks for this long trip (it is an eight hour train ride).
- The seating would be significantly tighter in a bus than Amtrak's business class, even significantly tighter than Amtrak's coach class.
- No drinks being available for purchase means I would not be able to take my medications at lunchtime. Since we packed as lightly as possible and we planned on utilizing the Cafe Car on the train, we had no drinks on hand. Not being able to take my medications during the journey means I would be starting our trip with my health beginning to fail and might end up in a hospital.
- Having no food available would also be taxing for my primary illness.
- A cancelled train would fill up all trains for the next week which means many people would be stranded for days. Due to our attempts at rescheduling in the previous weeks, we already knew that the trains before and after our trip were booked solid until after the holidays.
- It is the busiest time of year for hotels so there would be no hotels available for delays and extended stays
In my head, I knew we needed to make a decision as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I knew that hopping on a bus for a trip down to Manhattan would be an absolutely terrible idea for my health. There are very valid reasons why we always travel on Amtrak. Unfortunately, at the time, Sheila seemed to be holding on to the hope that the train might somehow begin to run again so it could take us down to New York City. I looked at her and I could see the indecision on her face. I asked her for her thoughts but she wouldn't provide any insight to her thoughts but asked what I thought. In my head, I had already decided that we had only two choices but I wasn't sure she was ready to hear it. I was hoping she would quickly come to the same realization as I so that there would be no need for a persuasive debate.
I had already come to the conclusion we had only two options:
1. Cancel the trip altogether and just consider the money we laid out in advance a loss (which was a significant amount).
or
2. Drive down to Manhattan in our car which neither one of us wanted to do but an option that was far better than a bus.
Unfortunately, we needed to have this short debate in the train station in front of the kids as well as other passengers. I knew the sooner we started our drive, the better. Alternately, we could wait for hours for a bus to arrive only to find out that no bus will arrive and then the day would be wasted. Within a few minutes, we were making our way through the pouring rain back to the car.
If we were going to drive to Manhattan, we needed to head back to the house first to do some planning and add some food and drinks to our load. There was also some navigational planning that needed to be done as well as a few phone calls to Amtrak and the hotel.
We only got down the road a bit before Amtrak sent Sheila an alert claiming that our train was "Delayed", not "Cancelled". We made a beeline back to the train station and Sheila ran in to talk to the Amtrak Attendant. He made it clear that the alert meant nothing and was wrong. It was already impossible for our train to proceed due to flooding so our train was definitely cancelled. We headed back to the house, again.
On the drive back to the house, the rivers and streams were now nipping at the roadways. From the look of the roads, rivers and streams, we knew we had to make this trip back to the house a very short one otherwise we might get trapped at the house by the flooding. None of us wanted that! It was bad enough that we had to drive to Manhattan. We definitely did not want to get trapped in Waterbury due to flooding!
While Sheila was on the phone with Amtrak (an attempt to get a full refund for the round-trip... which she managed to get) and the hotel (changing our arrival time and arranging for parking)... I was figuring out the best route into Manhattan.
Getting onto Manhattan Island was something I didn't want to just improvise in real time especially not at rush hour which is when we would be arriving. I knew I needed a plan. Manhattan is a maze of one way streets with limited bridges and tunnels for entry and exit. Manhattan is an island so we needed a bridge with northern access. I quickly came up with a plan, we grabbed snacks, drinks, some pillows and blankets and headed back out to the car getting soaked once again.
We just barely made it out of Waterbury before Sheila was getting notifications that the town was flooded with closed roads blocking most escape routes. We would later learn that there was more damage to homes downtown. It wasn't as bad as our July flooding but it was bad enough to have caused a good number of people to end this absolutely horrendous year in an even worse place than when this year had started.
Although we definitely missed traveling on Amtrak... okay, we were flat-out disappointed by having to drive... this really sucked the big one... we did manage to get to the hotel with no problems. During the drive, the kids played a few games and watched a movie or two in the back seat. Traffic delays were minimal for rush hour and we arrived at the same time that we would have had we taken the train so we lost out on no time. If anything, we may have gained about a half hour or more!
Although the drive was uneventful, it still beat on my health and spinal injuries a bit. I was exhausted by the time we arrived at the hotel.
The drive into Manhattan was probably quite memorable for Lukey and Kenzie. It was dark but the skyscrapers and all the lights were their first observations and I think they were in awe. We had to just barely touch upon Times Square on our way to the hotel so they got a glimpse of that too as we made our way over to our hotel. It wasn't until we were standing on a sidewalk outside our hotel that they were completely awestruck by the height of all the skyscrapers. Although, now that I think about it, they were amazed at the height of our room when they looked out the windows of our room to the city below.
Once we pulled the car into the hotel's parking garage, we emptied the car, turned the car over to the valet and then headed into the lobby so we could check into the hotel. This is a big hotel so there was a little bit of searching and walking to do just to get to the lobby. Then we found the bank of elevators that would take us to our floor... the 41st floor. We had some decent views from that height! The kids had never even seen a building as tall as the floor where our hotel room was located but this 46 floor hotel was actually being dwarfed by some of the surrounding buildings.
I later learned that Kenzie was a bit concerned that I handed a key to Gee's car over to a stranger (the valet) and that we just left the car at the back door to the hotel lobby. Gee calmed her down and we made our way through the lobby to the front desk.
The kids were also amazed at how quickly the elevator rose to the 41st floor. We shot up there in less than a minute. The way our day was going, I would not have been surprised if we were told the elevators were out of order and we needed to climb the stairs! Fortunately, the elevators were operating smoothly and quickly.
At other hotels we have stayed at in Manhattan, the elevators were a major problem. First, elevators in some Manhattan hotels can be tiny tightly fitting only two or three people with one piece of luggage each. Some elevators are rather slow too. Between the elevators being tiny as well as agonizingly slow, you can waste upwards of 20 minutes trying to get from your room to the lobby! In one hotel, we were on the eighth floor but we found that it was far faster to just climb up and down the stairs rather than wait for an available elevator. Climbing up and down eight floors was not all that kind to my spinal injuries nor my primary illness. The wait for an available elevator was agonizing though! Fortunately, this high rise Hilton hotel for this trip to Manhattan had many elevators, they were large, and they were fast.
So, the kids never got their Amtrak trip. They didn't get to see the new Moynihan Train Hall in Penn Station as the train pulled into the station. They missed out on a subway ride from Penn Station to 53rd Street. Nevertheless, we were now in midtown Manhattan.
After dropping our things in our 41st floor 'City View' room, we quickly got ready for our first walk through midtown Manhattan.
Here is a short video clip of a model train inside the Waterbury train station during our very short time at this useless-to-us Amtrak station...
sad, lukas
ReplyDeleteYeah.. that was a bummer, for sure!
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