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After many months of planning and research, we are finally on our way to the Memphis Central Station to board the Amtrak train the City of New Orleans. We board the train at 10:40 p.m. heading to Chicago. We leave Chicago on the Empire Builder heading to Seattle, Washington. After spending the night there, we are heading to Portland, Oregon. That is as far as we have made plans for.
We were going to ride the train round trip, but we decided to stay longer in Portland and fly home instead. We live in Parsons, Tennessee which sits along the beautiful Tennessee River. We live 127 miles from the Memphis Airport and 105 miles from Nashville’s Airport. When it comes to traffic, I am not sure which is worse, Nashville or Memphis.
Did you have fun along the way?
But of course, there isn’t a train station in Nashville. There is a train station in Dyersburg, TN but it’s a lonely dark place at 3 AM when the train stops there. The prices were just about the same. We considered parking at the train station, but we didn’t want to leave our car in Dyersburg.
Then I started looking at prices to leave the car at the Memphis Amtrak station. It was $26 plus taxes per day. Since we were flying home, we checked out the parking at the Memphis airport, which was $15 per day plus taxes. So, we took the cheap way out and had a friend drive us to the train station. No parking fees, we can leave early, stop at IKEA, and we get to have a girls’ night out supper before we go. Win, win all the way around. Well, except we will probably spend WAY more than we would have on the parking. 😊
We are riding in coach seats in the City of New Orleans. We have one seat on the lower level and two on the upper level. I read somewhere the lower-level seats have more leg room and some have curtains to draw across the area. I am excited to find out. The lower-level seats are closer to the bathrooms, but I am sure you are disturbed more often by people boarding the train. I can’t wait to find out.
The last day at home before hopping a Train
Finally, we are planning to leave today. All the suitcases are packed, everything is ready, we’re just waiting and watching the clock for the time to get here. I can’t make my mind up if I want to take my video camera and have my cannon camera around my neck to take still photos. I’m thinking I’m just not going to be happy unless I do both.
My daughter Tori was supposed to take us to the train station, but she had to work today. So our friend Jennifer Mayo will be taking us to the train station in Memphis. On the way we plan on stopping to eat at one of Memphis’s barbecue restaurants where we’ll meet a friend of Gwen and Jennifer’s. We debated on which restaurant we would like to go to. I’m not sure what the final decision was, I guess I’ll find out too. We also talked about going to IKEA but I don’t think we’re going to have time to do that.
Sadly, my cousin Leroy Mays passed away and his funeral was today. I was glad that we would be able to attend. Leroy was 88 and loved to fish and hunt. One of his nephews preached the funeral with a hunting vest on. Very appropriate. After the funeral most of the family when to the local Mexican restaurant for lunch. The food was great, but it was around 2PM before we finished, which was much too late for any of us to want to eat again before boarding the train. That was to end up being a bad decision later.
Jennifer, Tiffany, Thomas, Adryian and I went back to the house for a fun time of Internet searches for things like the longest bridges and the safest places to live. Gwen went to Lexington to visit Aunt Dood who is recovering in a nursing home.
2 thoughts on “The Amtrak Memphis Central Train Station”
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