Acela from NYC to Washington DC

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of riding the Amtrak Acela train from NYC to Washington DC. I had made this run several years earlier but had forgotten the beauty of the experience, especially when compared to the pain involved in flying the same route.
On Wednesday evening we took the 6:00 pm train from Penn Station and arrived 2 hours and 45 minutes later at Union Station with intermediary stops (very quick stops) at Newark, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
We rode business class. The cars were clean and spacious, there was plenty of room for us to work and cell access was intermittent but better than nothing.
There is also a “quiet” car where phones are banned and conversations need to be kept to a whisper.
There was plenty of room for carry-on baggage both in the overhead compartments and in larger storage units at the ends of each car. There was a wide-variety of food available to purchase and take onboard in Penn Station, and a limited selection of snacks and beverages for purchase on-board.
And, the real pleasure came from what we didn’t experience. There was no stop-and-go traffic getting out to LaGuardia airport, there was no need to suffer airport delays due to weather, malfunctions and/or poor scheduling, there was no being cramped into a tiny airline seat and fighting for an overhead bin.
When we arrived at Union Station, already decorated for the holiday season with giant wreaths, we were just blocks from our hotel in downtown Washington DC. If we hadn’t already eaten, we would have sat down and enjoyed a meal at the rotunda restaurant, with its Parisian bistro décor and white tablecloths.