So Many Dishes

I haven’t done it often, but I love traveling by train. It combines the best of travel: someone else is getting you from place to place, you have a chance to see the scenery, and you’re close to the ground. I’m not a white knuckle flyer anymore, but I don’t appreciate being packed in like a sardine. We once took the auto train from Florida to its northern terminus in Virginia, and then back, and it was a wonderful trip. Ben was only 3 years old at the time, and I think he would have been happy to spend the entire vacation riding the train.

We’ve ridden trains in Europe, and although none of those trips have been more than a few hours, they have all been enjoyable. On our last trip to England, we took a train from Paddington Station, which is a beautiful historic station, with the main part dating from the 1850s.

I’m fascinated by trains. We’ve been to the wonderful California train museum in Sacramento and the British national railway museum in York. We had the opportunity to ride one of the historic steam trains in Somerset, which was a great experience.

Of course, I have a train story. We rode the train a couple of times while we lived in Prague. We decided to go to Karlstejn, the historic castle outside Prague, which was just a short train ride from the city. But we couldn’t understand the announcements, and we thought we were in Karlstejn, so we got off the train, only to discover that we were one stop short, at a small station in pretty much the middle of nowhere. We weren’t doing very well at making ourselves understood until a gentleman who spoke a little English came to our rescue. He helped us buy tickets to get to the Karlstejn station. We eventually made it to the castle, had a wonderful tour, and survived our return trip with no mishaps and a good story.