amtrak

“In 2008, my wife, my then-7-year-year-old daughter and I were going to take Amtrak from Los Angeles to Chicago, but the Amtrak booking agent screwed the reservations up so badly that we instead decided to take a train from Montreal to Vancouver.

There was some poignancy to this, as my grandmother was a picture bride from Greece. She had grown up on a small Dodecanese island and crossed the Atlantic in the 1920s. For the last leg of her journey, she took a train from Montreal to meet my grandfather (for the first time) in Vancouver. They met on a Saturday and married on a Monday in a Russian Orthodox Church. Experiencing the same journey that my grandmother had taken seemed like a good vacation hook.

Montreal was our point of departure, an enchanting city with fantastic food and charming denizens. After a few days we headed out to Toronto on a commuter-style train. It was perfectly adequate, but not particularly enchanting, and certainly not what my grandmother would have traveled on.

In Toronto, my daughter and I had afternoon tea at the Fairmont Royal York across from the train station, where we embarked on a more picturesque excursion.

We had a triple compartment. It was located in a stainless-steel streamlined car that was built in the 1950s, spot on for our little family of Midcentury Modern enthusiasts. We saw the train snake through Ontario forests, felt it rumble along Canada’s midwestern plains and then head up through the spectacular Canadian Rockies. There were plenty of bear, elk and other wildlife sightings along the way. We ate surprisingly good food like trout and pork chops for dinner. At night we watched train movies like “Murder on the Orient Express.”

We got off in Jasper, the Yellowstone of Canada, filled with glaciers, craggy mountains, waterfalls, rivers and spectacular vistas. We took bike and horseback rides. When I admonished my 7 year-old for complaining too much during a particularly wonderful excursion, she retorted, “Daddy, complaining is my passion!”

After a few days we got back on the train and headed to Vancouver. This was another scenic parade of mountains, rivers and forests.

In Stanley Park I pondered my grandmother’s voyage. Our trip was one of leisure. Hers was a life decision to escape the bleak prospects of an island girl.”

— George Skarpelos, Los Angeles