- Joined
- Mar 9, 2012
- Messages
- 7
Hello everyone! This is my first post here, I've been reading the board for a few days.
I'm planning a trip for a friend and I to take to San Diego this summer. We live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, so there's no convenient Amtrak station nearby! We're thinking of possibly flying to Chicago and then taking a train to San Diego. The Southwest Chief is the obvious choice, and then a Surfliner down to San Diego. However, I've heard that the California Zephyr is the better route. The complication with the Zephyr is that connecting to San Diego looks like a big hassle, with a few buses and trains mixed in (kind of odd there's no direct service from Sacramento or Emeryville to LA?)
Our other main idea was to drive down to Minot, ND and catch the Empire Builder heading west to Portland, and from there take the Coast Starlight down to LA (and surfliner to San Diego). Then we could take the same trains back and drive home (4 hours north of Minot). This way no flights, relatively few transfers. The downside is taking the same route both ways (not really a downside though, is it?). Or we could fly to Vancouver, BC and take the Amtrak bus service to Seattle and take the Coast down to LA.
It's so hard planning something like this instead of flights due to the slower rate of travel and multiple small connections needed sometimes!
Any advice anyone can give is greatly appreciated! (mainly on whether to take the Empire/Coast or a Chicago-San Diego route...and which of the two Chicago routes to take if we go that way!)
I'm planning a trip for a friend and I to take to San Diego this summer. We live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, so there's no convenient Amtrak station nearby! We're thinking of possibly flying to Chicago and then taking a train to San Diego. The Southwest Chief is the obvious choice, and then a Surfliner down to San Diego. However, I've heard that the California Zephyr is the better route. The complication with the Zephyr is that connecting to San Diego looks like a big hassle, with a few buses and trains mixed in (kind of odd there's no direct service from Sacramento or Emeryville to LA?)
Our other main idea was to drive down to Minot, ND and catch the Empire Builder heading west to Portland, and from there take the Coast Starlight down to LA (and surfliner to San Diego). Then we could take the same trains back and drive home (4 hours north of Minot). This way no flights, relatively few transfers. The downside is taking the same route both ways (not really a downside though, is it?). Or we could fly to Vancouver, BC and take the Amtrak bus service to Seattle and take the Coast down to LA.
It's so hard planning something like this instead of flights due to the slower rate of travel and multiple small connections needed sometimes!
Any advice anyone can give is greatly appreciated! (mainly on whether to take the Empire/Coast or a Chicago-San Diego route...and which of the two Chicago routes to take if we go that way!)
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