Saturday before our NYC trip we packed, printed tickets, looked at our driving route, and any last minute planning. That night we took K to a local kennel. Once she got settled in we went out to eat and got rest for our long day of travel ahead.

On Easter we got up early, packed the car and started our 5 hour journey to Poughkeepsie NY.  I tried to grade during the familiar portions of the route but had to stop once we got to the Catskill mountains; a beautiful area where we saw many holiday hikers out at the trail heads.

We took a toll bridge over the Hudson River drove to the Poughkeepsie train station. Once there we asked about long term parking at the station, paid for our car, and had lunch. Our commuter train to Penn Station came right on time. We grabbed our bags and showed our tickets, which were scanned using an iPhone.

It has been a long time since I’ve traveled Amtrak, definitely way before iPhones were used to scan tickets. For L this was a new experience.

Although it was only an hour and a half commuter train, we needed no entertainment, staring out the window was perfect. On one side of the train we followed the Hudson river into the city passing West Point along the way. On the other side we passed commuter suburbs of the Big Apple.

On the train we planned out our next leg of the journey, and the one I was most stressed about: getting to our hotel. Fortunately, I found a subway app that Luke downloaded onto his phone similar to google maps or gps, it helped us decide which subway line we needed.

We got to Penn Station and in the main terminal asked around for where to get metro cards. We got unlimited metro card use for our stay then hauled our luggage across the tunnels to our subway line. It was a little tricky carrying our bags through the subway terminals and keeping our bags between our legs while holding on to poles in the subway train, but we managed.

Fortunately we didn’t have to walk very far once we got off the subway to find our hotel. We checked in and took the evaluator to our 14th floor room. Although it was “club” size room it worked just fine.

We settled in then went out to eat to a place called “Stout”, which has as you can guess has many stout and porter beers on tap and in bottles, as well as some decent gluten free options. There while everyone watched the Syracuse basketball game we planned our next day of adventures.