Georgia, Part 1

Actual dates: Thursday, December 6th and Friday morning, December 7th.

Someone remind me again why we think we enjoy this stuff?

This trip is already a heavy-weight contender for "Worst Vacation Ever," and we aren't even in Georgia yet.  We arrived at Penn Station in Philadelphia early (thanks, Jim!), picked up tickets, and asked a station Red Cap to help us get our bags to the lounge to wait.  He can't.  We aren't sleeping compartment passengers.

Say what?!

When we actually checked the tickets, we discovered he was right.  Instead of having the handicapped compartment in the sleeping car, my parents had the handicapped seating in the coach section.  This means sleeping sitting up all night and sharing the car with 40 or 50 other people.

Mom attempted to get this straightened out at the ticket window.  The agent told us all the sleeping compartments were sold out and there was nothing he could do for us.  Then we went to customer service.  The agent made a call to headquarters, and Mom got precisely nowhere.  All compartments were sold out.  Finally we decided that my parents would sleep in my room (I did have the correct sleeper accommodations), and I would travel in coach.

Oh, yay.

Not.

God bless the fellow who took our bags up to the lounge.  He asked the train conductor about finding a sleeping compartment at any point along the route.  Thanks to him, I traveled in coach until the train arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina at 2 a.m., and then transferred to an open sleeping compartment for the rest of the trip.  So I did manage to get about four hours of sleep before we pulled into Atlanta at 7:50 a.m.  You better believe he's going to get a letter of commendation from me when I get home.

In all fairness, things weren't bad in coach.  There were four children in my car, and I only saw one of them.  I didn't hear any of them.  Everyone pretty much politely ignored everyone else, so there was some semblance of privacy.  It wouldn't be a bad way to travel if it were just for a few hours during the day.  Trying to sleep in there at night is a whole 'nother story.

And dinner was very good -- roasted chicken with vegetables.  Of course, I had to pay extra for it, since I was a coach passenger, and I was interrupted in the middle of dinner by the conductor, because he needed to scan my ticket, which was four cars back at my coach seat.

But we did finally get into Atlanta, picked up the bags and our rental car, and got out of town.  The first three nights are booked in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

And the "fun" continues....