Thursday – travel to Washington

This morning went smoothly. I walked from my apartment at the top of Beacon Hill to the station for the train to Washington rather than take the T. It was only about 1 ½ km and easier to walk than negotiate peak hour business people with a pack on.

While I was waiting I was half watching a TV screen with the ‘ we are looking after you and your safety on the trains and these are the things we are doing’ video. The sound was indistinct, but there were subtitles. As you know, I am not good with texting on my mobile and dislike abbreviations. When I read, I see combination of letters not sounds. The words on the screen were saying how they use K9s . I thought – is that a new sort of gun or an abbreviation for a anti-terrorist squad or something ? Then I looked at the pictures and saw a dog and his handler. I smiled at myself at the several seconds it took my brain to work out that a K9 was a dog as in canine, not Kay-nine. Later I saw a dog-handler with his official vest on the said ‘Amtrak Police’ in big writing and under that ‘K9 unit’ .

I worked out how to bypass the normal ‘getting onto the train’ system. On the departure board, the train to Washington was the only long distance one . I saw several red-hatted porters taking people and their largish bags to a particular train. So , a good guess would be that was the right train. There were a few guard like people loitering. I just went out and said something along the lines of not knowing what the system was ( not a real lie) , that was the train to Washington wasn’t it and could I please get on?’ ‘Wait a moment “ he said , then beckoned me on. Easy. It would not have worked in New York though because you could not see the platforms from the station waiting area.

I had an uneventful journey – quite long 9.15 to 3.45pm. I decided walking would take less total energy ( i.e mental + physical) than working out where the bus stop was, how to pay, etc etc. The Washington public transport web site is quite confusing and there appear to be many options for fares and passes. It took about ¾ hour which was fine. Probably a bit less. That includes the few minutes it took me to work out that I had to wave the door tag in front of the sensor in the lift before it would go. It was in the instructions but I had forgotten.

The apartment is nice. Quite modern. Has it’s own washing machine. I dumped my stuff and went out again. There is a Wholefoods Market about 4 blocks away that I went to and bought some breakfast stuff and dinner for tonight. They have 3 huge ‘help yourself, fill a container and get it weighed at the checkout counter’ bars. One is a hole lot of different chopped up raw food , that I tried in Boston, another has many different made-up salads, that I tried tonight and a third is all hot food . I have never seen so much prepared food to choose from.