bktheirregular (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bktheirregular) wrote2007-05-11 07:48 pm
bktheirregular) wrote2007-05-11 07:48 pm
Notes in transit
New York's Pennsylvania Station has a name to conjure with, from the Golden Age, the Gilded Age, what have you. The current Penn Station, underneath Madison Square Garden, doesn't live up to its reputation. It's a cheerless, soulless, concrete rabbit warren, one in which the only signs of vitality come from the shops. It's ... generic. (Grand Central Station, ten blocks north and five east, is a much more elegant place.)
Islip airport (technically, Long Island MacArthur Airport) is a quiet affair, without the chaos one finds at Kennedy or LaGuardia airports. It's a ways out; from Penn Station, it's an hour and a quarter by train, then another five, ten minutes by cab or shuttle-bus (comparable to the trip out to LaGuardia or JFK if you hit bad traffic).
The train trip wasn't too bad, actually; costs less than the cab ride from First Avenue in the Sixties to Penn Station, and much more comfortable, too.
The plane split the difference, I suppose, between a train trip and what I normally go through with air travel. Mostly, I've realized, it's because when I fly, it's usually international, so it's an odd occurrence for me to get on a plane without having to pass through passport control and customs. Plus, I wasn't stuck in the airplane seat for eleven hours.
Monday, I'll have a report on what the train trip from Chicago to New York is like in the modern age. In the meantime, the to-do list now consists of:find El stop nearby with park-and-ride lot find food.
Islip airport (technically, Long Island MacArthur Airport) is a quiet affair, without the chaos one finds at Kennedy or LaGuardia airports. It's a ways out; from Penn Station, it's an hour and a quarter by train, then another five, ten minutes by cab or shuttle-bus (comparable to the trip out to LaGuardia or JFK if you hit bad traffic).
The train trip wasn't too bad, actually; costs less than the cab ride from First Avenue in the Sixties to Penn Station, and much more comfortable, too.
The plane split the difference, I suppose, between a train trip and what I normally go through with air travel. Mostly, I've realized, it's because when I fly, it's usually international, so it's an odd occurrence for me to get on a plane without having to pass through passport control and customs. Plus, I wasn't stuck in the airplane seat for eleven hours.
Monday, I'll have a report on what the train trip from Chicago to New York is like in the modern age. In the meantime, the to-do list now consists of: