Friday March 10th 2023 - Spring Road Trip Day 1

Brian and I both have been ready for a vacation.  I’ve had a marathon of business travel with trips to Tokyo, Memphis and San Diego.  Brian has been balancing a huge number of projects and initiatives at his day job and continues to work part time at Target.

Our plan is to spend 9 days going from home to Richmond Virginia, Charlotte North Carolina and a few other stops on the way.  I got back from San Diego about 4 pm Thursday.  We spent the night in downtown Rochester to be ready for our 5:40 AM train to NYC.  We had a great dinner at a place we’d never been to called Polizzis.  Interestingly, despite being on a major well known street, Goodman, there is an entire neighborhood tucked away in a few streets we’d never explored.  There are at least 6 restaurants, 3 of which we already know we want to try, in that little 2 block stretch.  The hotel in Rochester was an interesting historic property that was converted into a Doubletree. Most Doubletree properties are spacious and modern but purpose built and bland. This hotel has what is apparently a popular eatery, Char, on the ground floor as well as a rooftop bar.  Overall it was a good start to our trip though I must say that the price charged for our room was entirely unjustified for what it was and the property isn’t in tip top shape.

The train to NYC was sold out and hence very crowded.  We just wanted to get seats together so we hurriedly grabbed the first seat pair we could find which ended up being at the very rear of a car.  This put us far from the bathrooms and at least behind us, other people.  What we didn’t have time to evaluate was how tiresome the blasts of cold air would get from the multitude of people going to and from other parts of the train.  We also had only about 1/3 of the normal window space that other seats had.  It was a long journey to NYC.  There wasn’t any singular huge irritation but it was noisy and smelly sometimes and certainly made me wish I’d gone for business class instead of coach.  In business class you are at the very end of the train with very little traffic AND you have assigned seats.  There have been times I’ve wondered if I was getting value for the extra cost of Business Class but this trip affirms to me that, for us, having a quieter reserved seat is worth the extra cost let alone the other little (and they are minor) improvements in Amtrak’s Business Class.

In NYC we explored the beautiful Moynihan Train hall which is such a huge improvement over the underground rat maze that was Penn Station that it seems entirely worth whatever it cost in money and time to build.  We had lunch at ‘Chopt’ which makes creative salads and warm bowls.  One of the best things about being in California was the easy access to wonderful fresh produce and Chopt softened the landing coming back to the East coast where such things just aren’t eaten and served with the same gusto and flair as Southern California.

The 2nd train wasn’t sold out and while we had less leg room than on the first train, the quieter people around us and more high speed track made the 2nd journey a little easier than the first.  As we were getting quite close to Richmond I started looking at Google Maps to understand the geography of where we were staying versus the things we wanted to see and do in Richmond.  The original plan was to be car free in Richmond to save money and pick up the rental car Sunday on the way out of town.  Unfortunately, I realized that despite being called Richmond City Gateway hotel, the hotel we booked at was far from the urban core.  So I made a quick call to Enterprise and thankfully was able to add a few days to the rental car without insane rate increases and change the pickup location to the airport which is open long hours instead of the train station location which wasn’t open at that time.  The Lyft journey to the airport cost a very unsettling 91 dollars before tip.  Our trip from home to to Rochester hotel was not quite that much but it was pretty ridiculous too.  Clearly competing in this tight labor market has brought greatly increased costs to the ride share companies and/or they are making hay while the making is good.

Our hotel here in Richmond is just barely ok.  Hotels were hard to get and pricey, apparently there is a St Patrick’s day event here in town this weekend which probably didn’t help our choices.  This Best Western Premiere is the most, probably the only, Premiere property we’ve stayed at that was a let down.  It’s not terrible but the other Premiere hotels we’ve stayed at were all remarkable interesting properties with landscaped grounds, beautiful destination dining or spacious apartment like rooms.  This is just a big boring hotel that happens to have a restaurant on-site and the other few check box items you must have to qualify as a Premiere.  The first floor smells smoky, there are a lot of Marijuana enthusiasts even at 7 am and the room is not picture perfect by any means.

One positive note for our trip so far has been the really nice service interactions.  The Amtrak staff weren’t working very hard at engaging with people but the hotel staff in Rochester, our Lyft drivers and waiters etc have been super helpful and nice overall even the people at the salad place in NYC were great.  I’m thankful to be able to go on these big road trips at all, despite my first world problem observations.