Riding on The City of New Orleans
After we checked out of the hotel we headed for the train station to leave our bags in the lounge. The lounge was pretty impressive. We sat for a few minutes in the peace and quiet.
Next we headed to Burghauf’s for our last meal in Chicago. I have special childhood memories attached to this restaurant. However, to shake things up a bit, we started in the bar. I did not visit the bar as part of my childhood. We hat the best hot pretzel ever and listened to live good old German music. It was great fun.
The restaurant is quite different from the bar and a bit more charming. I had my old favorite Sour Brotten and it was fabulous.
Now it was time to board the train.
We picked up our bags and waited in the lounge for the boarding call. They would have driven us but we walked to the train.
We were greeted by our porter and shown to our roomette. How cute was our little space. The beds were not made up yet so we had two seats facing each other with a pull down table and very large picture window. There were a couple of other small places to put our bags.
We headed to the club car for our second dinner. After all, our meals were included in the price of the ticket.
I had a rather dull salad and a scotch.
It was getting late so we headed back to our room. The beds were made up and we said good night to mike.
At first I thought there was too much motion and shaking to sleep but in no time I was sound asleep. I woke up a couple of times to notice we were standing still but then we would move and I would be rocked back to sleep.
I could always ask my phone where we were.
At 5:30 we woke up and went to the observation car to watch the sun come up. We were in Memphis and half way there just like the song.
Next it was time for breakfast and it was pretty good. When we returned our room was made up.
We spent a lot of time in the observation car watching the country go buy. We saw cotton fields, the delta, and lots of sweet little towns.
I forgot to mention that our room was on the second floor and so were the other places we spent time.
We Arrived in New Orleans at about 4:00. We took a taxi to our hotel.
We went to a nearby outdoor bar and had a cold drink while listening to music.
Then we showered and rested a bit.
We headed out for a nice walk to Antoine’s for our special dinner.
Of course we started with Oysters Rockefeller since that is where they were invented.
What a lovely restaurant and the food was amazing.
The service was over the top. The server seemed excited to read me the menu but I already knew what I wanted.
After dinner we took a slow walk down Bourbon Street and listened to music and did some great people watching.
Then it was time to walk back to our hotel and crawl into bed.