With Thanksgiving behind us the Holiday season is just around the corner. Christmas trees and lit menorahs, snowball fights and afternoons curled up in front of a roaring fire, and of course spending quality time with friends and family. But before you can sing carols and make cookies with your family, many people have to power through the stress of holiday travel. Everyone knows that traveling during the holiday seasons is nothing if not slow and at moments stressful.
My family spends Thanksgiving in Chicago and this year I took the opportunity to spend a little extra time with my grandparents, catching up on our years and helping Mamaw get everything ready for the big meal on Thursday. I hopped on an Amtrak and let me tell you, that was one of my best decisions of the holiday! Around 2.8 million people were traveling to Chicago for the holidays and most of those were coming in by car. Now I’m no city dweller and honestly Chicago traffic on a normal day drives me nuts. Add in the holiday rush and that is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. Luckily, instead of putting myself through standstill traffic, I took the easier option and grabbed one of the last tickets on what turned out to be a sold out train.
I’m not quite sure why more people don’t travel by train, especially if they are travelling alone. It is a relatively cheap form of travel for solo travelers, and actually very comfortable. I had more room to stretch out on the train than in my car or on a plane! I could listen to my music, get some work done, and just look forward to having some quality time with my relatives. So I guess my point is that if you are like me, and holiday travel stresses you out, take a look at the train schedule and relax a little bit instead this holiday season.