This is the first of a series of entries that more or less track our Foodie Pilgrim Grand Transcontinental Adventure. I say "more or less" because it won't quite be a day-by-day relation of events, but more a series of possible day-trips that you might enjoy if you some day take a similar journey. This installment describes the trip to Chicago aboard Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited.  

We left Plymouth on the 9am Plymouth &Brockton bus, arriving at Boston South Station after a comfortable and uneventful ride.  Lorna had a light lunch at Cheeseboy, a small chain. I noshed on a kabanoszy from my store of provisions. I had stocked up on goodies from The Cheese Shop in Concord and from Baza Market in Newton because the food on the train can get pretty boring.

The ride to Albany, was uneventful, but very green with ponds and lakes and rivers everywhere bounded by tree-covered slopes and underbrush. We did not realize the significance of that chance observation until we were well west of the Mississippi River!

At Albany (the station is really in neighboring Rensselaer, on the east bank of the Hudson River), the Boston 448 train joins up with the New York City 48 train, then the combined train continues west to Chicago. This makes the train very long. Boston provides the Lounge Car, and the Dining Car comes from New York; we had to walk through another coach, then the Lounge Car, and then four more coaches before getting to the Dining Car!

You can get out of the train for an hour in Albany. The station is nice, and it has good coffee with free WiFi, but there's not much else to do. You can stay on the train if you like. We don't get stir-crazy; we relax.

It's good to know about that WiFi if you need it, though, because so far on Amtrak only the Northeast Corridor trains have WiFi. Cell phone reception is good most of the way except in Kansas and some of New Mexico(we have Verizon), but WiFi is hard to come by, even in the stations. Of course, it may be bad in the places where I did not check, such as when I was asleep). 

After Albany we rode along the Erie Canal until sunset. It is good to note that the view from the train is different from one side to the other. On the Lake Shore Limited, think POSH, or "Port out, Starboard home": the Erie Canal is on the south side of the tracks, so you get a great view from the left-hand side of the train as you head west, and from the right-hand side as you head east. From the other side of the train you can see the view in the Dining Car, the Lounge Car, and the coaches, but if you are in a sleeper you only have a window on one side of the train.

Dinner was an overpriced half-roast-chicken dinner in the dining car with Linda, a teacher, and Brendan, her grandson and a young history buff. We talked about the Erie Canal.

I will describe many Dining Car meals in this travelogue because it is a common question I get from people. It is important to note that the Dining Car faces certain unusual and serious limitations: no gas range, no big pots of boiling water, limited space for storing provisions and even more limited space for equipment. And of course their clientele has very limited options. They're the only game in town. On the other hand, I do think they could do better with a little imagination. There was a time when Amtrak had special menus for each route, so you might order "fresh mountain trout" while riding through the Rocky Mountains on the California Zephyr. But when I had a chance to try it in 2001, that trout had clearly started the trip frozen. 

We eat in the Dining Car on the Lake Shore Limited because that train has no Observation Car, but, as you will see, we dine considerably better on the big western trains with our own provisions. Shown here is a Bantam Cider barrel-aged La Grande cider from Cambridge, MA with a Thistle Hill Farm Tarentaise from North Pomfret, VT, but we were not have that delightful repast until somewhere in New Mexico.  

After dinner, we returned to our coach, with a brief stop in the Lounge Car for a cup of ice. We were somewhere west of Utica and the sun had set, so I read a Henry James' Turn of the Screw  novel and had a Manhattan Cocktail.

How's that? A Manhattan? Where did you get that?

The Lounge Car attendant offers some "cocktails" but the options are very limited, and the means of making them even more so. For example, they do not carry sweet or dry vermouth. Basically you can have one of a few nips and one of a few bottled fruit juices. A Martini is a nip of Tanqueray mixed with ice in a plastic cup.

Fortunately the Manhattan is one of those cocktails that includes no fruit juice, cream, or egg, so it need not be shaken. As a result, it can be mixed ahead of time with no ill effects...and transported surreptitiously in a Snapple bottle... 

Thanks to my friend Keith, I had an empty Snapple Diet Iced Tea bottle into which I mixed enough whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters to make three good sized drinks, one for each night on the train. I even included three cocktail cherries. I needed only ice and a glass, and I brought a nice, sturdy glass for the purpose.

Now I enjoy a Manhattan as much as anyone, but this had an additional purpose. When you ride coach, it can be hard to sleep in your seat. They recline only so far, and the foot support helps but it doesn't turn a chair into a bed. I have never been very good at sleeping in a chair. The Manhattan helps; I slept like a baby! 

We awoke somewhere west of romantic Toledo, OH and made haste to breakfast in the Dining Car. Because sleep can be sporadic at best, you might wake up in incoherent stages, with no alarm clock and no clear line between sleeping, dozing, and waking. Breakfast helps to define a start to the day.

Amtrak's Continental Breakfast is pretty ample. You choose between oatmeal with golden raisins and brown sugar or some cold cereal, plus yogurt, fruit, juice, and coffee. That and a chatty Amish breakfast companion were enough to bring us to full alertness for our Chicago Interlude, coming next. Stay tuned!