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The trip from Chicago to DC was shorter than the Emeryville-Chicago one, but it was in some ways more tiring. Let's see if I can cover the highlights (or sometimes the lowlights).
We got a 2 PM checkout, and our train was scheduled for a 5:45 PM departure. It's a good thing we had plenty of time, because it took three taxis before we got one that was big enough to hold all of our luggage. I Tweeted about this later and got a series of posts from people who I suspect have never traveled heavy.
( Jumping Ahead in the Story )
After not-fun with taxis, we finally got one that could get us and our bags to Chicago Union Station. It wasn't raining today, which was a huge help, and the driver was much nicer than most of the people with whom we'd dealt before. I got two of our nine bags checked and we headed for the Metropolitan Lounge.
( New, Bigger Lounge )
Our train was eventually roughly two hours late out of Chicago.
( Dealing With the Elephant in the Room )
We got dinner on board the train shortly after departure. Unlike the western long-distance 2-night trains like the California Zephyr, the shorter-distance overnight trains in the east are still serving "flexible" dining, which means microwavable meals.
( 'Flexible' Dining on the Cardinal )
We discovered (or re-discovered) that the Viewliner bedrooms aren't quite as large as their Superliner equivalents. Among other constraints was that it was hard to get the en suite toilet/shower compartment door to open wide enough for us to get into it without folding the chair inside the main room away.
( Challenges and workarounds )
After the late departure and minor annoyances, we did get to sleep pretty late. We appear to have lost more time overnight, for reasons we never determined. Our train did get shorter overnight, but that's intentional: the Cardinal is used to move equipment to and from Chicago from the heavy maintenance shops at Beech Grove, Indiana (near Indianapolis), and overnight we determined that our train had shrunk by seven cars.
Sunday's trip was very scenic, but hard to photograph. There are a few photos after the cut, and more if you click through to Flickr, as always.
( New River and other Views )
Eventually, about 2 1/2 hours late, we finally got to Washington Union Station.
( Wasting Time at WAS )
We got checked in to our room with a minimum of trouble. The room phone doesn't work, but that's a minor thing that we'll see about getting fixed tomorrow. I was surprised that (unlike nearly every hotel in which we've stayed since the pandemic hit), the Omni by default still provides daily housekeeping service in our room. We don't want daily service and will leave our Do Not Disturb sign up and call for supplies when we need them. This allows us to leave things the way that suits us.
This room is really nicely sized and it's shaped in a way that allows Lisa and I to both use it without having to crawl over each other all of the time the way so many hotel rooms seem to require. There's also a huge amount of storage space including a large closet. It took us a long time to unpack (there's those nine bags again), but there seems to be a place for nearly everything except the Winnipeg supplies that I'll turn over to the Winnipeg bid when the active bid team arrives. (And I won't be taking any of the Winnipeg supplies back with me, which will lighten our luggage, I hope.)
It's not going to be a cheap stay, but for a ten-day trip to DC, one could do a lot worse than this hotel. But now it's time to use the room for sleeping, as we have one day of pre-convention tourism before I have organizational commitments on the day before the convention.
We got a 2 PM checkout, and our train was scheduled for a 5:45 PM departure. It's a good thing we had plenty of time, because it took three taxis before we got one that was big enough to hold all of our luggage. I Tweeted about this later and got a series of posts from people who I suspect have never traveled heavy.
( Jumping Ahead in the Story )
After not-fun with taxis, we finally got one that could get us and our bags to Chicago Union Station. It wasn't raining today, which was a huge help, and the driver was much nicer than most of the people with whom we'd dealt before. I got two of our nine bags checked and we headed for the Metropolitan Lounge.
( New, Bigger Lounge )
Our train was eventually roughly two hours late out of Chicago.
( Dealing With the Elephant in the Room )
We got dinner on board the train shortly after departure. Unlike the western long-distance 2-night trains like the California Zephyr, the shorter-distance overnight trains in the east are still serving "flexible" dining, which means microwavable meals.
( 'Flexible' Dining on the Cardinal )
We discovered (or re-discovered) that the Viewliner bedrooms aren't quite as large as their Superliner equivalents. Among other constraints was that it was hard to get the en suite toilet/shower compartment door to open wide enough for us to get into it without folding the chair inside the main room away.
( Challenges and workarounds )
After the late departure and minor annoyances, we did get to sleep pretty late. We appear to have lost more time overnight, for reasons we never determined. Our train did get shorter overnight, but that's intentional: the Cardinal is used to move equipment to and from Chicago from the heavy maintenance shops at Beech Grove, Indiana (near Indianapolis), and overnight we determined that our train had shrunk by seven cars.
Sunday's trip was very scenic, but hard to photograph. There are a few photos after the cut, and more if you click through to Flickr, as always.
( New River and other Views )
Eventually, about 2 1/2 hours late, we finally got to Washington Union Station.
( Wasting Time at WAS )
We got checked in to our room with a minimum of trouble. The room phone doesn't work, but that's a minor thing that we'll see about getting fixed tomorrow. I was surprised that (unlike nearly every hotel in which we've stayed since the pandemic hit), the Omni by default still provides daily housekeeping service in our room. We don't want daily service and will leave our Do Not Disturb sign up and call for supplies when we need them. This allows us to leave things the way that suits us.
This room is really nicely sized and it's shaped in a way that allows Lisa and I to both use it without having to crawl over each other all of the time the way so many hotel rooms seem to require. There's also a huge amount of storage space including a large closet. It took us a long time to unpack (there's those nine bags again), but there seems to be a place for nearly everything except the Winnipeg supplies that I'll turn over to the Winnipeg bid when the active bid team arrives. (And I won't be taking any of the Winnipeg supplies back with me, which will lighten our luggage, I hope.)
It's not going to be a cheap stay, but for a ten-day trip to DC, one could do a lot worse than this hotel. But now it's time to use the room for sleeping, as we have one day of pre-convention tourism before I have organizational commitments on the day before the convention.
