Our marathon trip back to New York started with a bit of a busy morning as we went for breakfast at the hotel, packed up the van, checked out and then drove to the Kissimmee Amtrak station. I dropped off Sandra, the kids and all the luggage and then drove the van back to the rental agency, which was just a short trip across town. Once the rental was taken care of, I decided to walk back to the train station, as it was only a 30 minute walk and the last cab we had here did not have a meter and charged us $20 for a less than a 10 minute drive. My decision to walk neglected to take into account the heat and I was covered in sweat by the time I arrived at the very small train station.
We sat there for a bit over an hour until our train arrived, where we had to walk all the way down to the far end of the station in order to get into the coach cars. The Amtrak personnel did a good job of finding all the groups and getting them on the train first, so that we (and a couple of large groups going to Philadelphia) had seats together. We then settled in for the long train trip. It was exactly like the others, though the air conditioning in our car was initially not working very well, but that got fixed before long.
When I went to sleep, Amtrak was predicting that we would get into New York an hour early. When I woke up, we were two hours late, which didn't surprise me, because I did not sleep very well and every time I woke up the train was not moving. By the time we left Washington, where you leave freight traffic behind and minimize the delays, we were almost three hours late into New York. Practically all of our trains have been late, so we weren't surprised or worried, but this is the first train where Amtrak tried to make everyone feel better - much like when a plane is substantially delayed, they gave everyone a snack and water as we left Washington.
Once we were in New York, the plan was to grab a bit to eat at Penn Station and then head out for a bit of a walk to the apartment we rented. Penn Station was a crush of people and the food court had four restaurants and eight tables, so lunch was a bit of a crazy time. We should have just left the train station - Manhattan has a restaurant every three buildings, so it is quite easy to find one that isn't super busy. The walk to the apartment wasn't too bad, except that we had to carry all of our luggage, so I was quite tired by the time we arrived. It is a very New York apartment - an older building with very small apartments, though it is bigger than most of our hotel rooms and has a kitchen.
After settling in, we walked to a nearby grocery store for supplies. New Yorkers don't seem to shop for groceries in Manhattan because there aren't many of them and they are poorly stocked and expensive. I wonder if everyone just eats at all the restaurants and food carts. We kind of plan to do the same, as I want to eat pizza and hot dogs while we are here. This is our longer visit in New York. We are here until Thursday when we head up to Syracuse for the Watkins Glen NASCAR race. Tomorrow we plan to do a bit of exploring and visit Central Park.
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