September 21, 2007

Denise and I took Grandma Brown down to San Diego for a visit with Denise’s Uncle and family. We when by Amtrak train, I was a little nervous when this HUGE train pulled up to the station platform, but once I was on and at our seats I just laid on Denise & Grandma’s feet for my four hour nap down to San Diego. Once we were in San Diego Uncle Mike meet us at the Down Town (Santa Fe) station where we took a short walk to a restaurant for dinner where I took another nap under the table. Then after dinner we took another short walk down to the “USS Midway” this is a really big aircraft carrier from World War II, as we are walking along Denise checks her watch and sees it is time to go back to the train station for our train back home. We say good bye to Grandma and Uncle Mike at the car and walk to the train station where we start to get in the very long line with everyone else but the conductor tells us that we don’t wait there but at the front of the line with the business class ticket holders I guess I do come in handy sometimes : ) We board the train and find out that the four o’clock train is still here and that the 5:50 train is going to push the broken train back to Union Station so off we go on time. At the San Clemente Pier station we make a unscheduled stop for about a hour where we don’t know why we’ve stopped but the train gets going again but only for the twenty minutes it takes to get to the San Juan Capistrano station where there is an ---- for all passengers to get off the train that the train has broken down and we now two full trains worth of people have to wait for the full 9:42pm train to pick us up (standing room only) and take us to Union Station where they will then bus us to our stops. Denise and I did not get home till 2:30 in the morning when should have been home by 10pm. But who know that the trains were going to break down, so we will be taking to train again for a weekend in Carpinteria and Santa Barbara later this year.