An autumn snow storm is about to bear down on the Northeast, ruining road travel and completely screwing up air travel for the rest of the country. Cars and planes are clearly no means of travel at all, then. The way towards the future is clearly the train.
Alright, now that I'm done with my impression of an 1890s robber baron, we can actually admit that train travel in the US is generally slow and expensive. But in winter, it can actually be a boon, saving you from serious travel headaches. Plus, there's a solid chance you'll get to your destination when you actually said you would, rather than sitting through interminable delays in an airport this holiday season.
But like I said, train travel can be pricey. While that's terrible for the real world, it can make for some interesting challenges while you're sitting there, bored at work during Thanksgiving week, when nothing is happening, everyone knows nothing is happening, your boss knows nothing is happening, and yet Justin and Francine in marketing keep insisting that "THIS WEEK IS A REGULAR WORK WEEK" and you want to punch their chipper little faces.
So why not try to find the most expensive train trip in the world? At least it'll look like you're planning travel for a conference or something, and then you can tell the whole marketing department to shove it.
We've done a similar challenge for plane travel, so similar rules apply, with a slight twist. Again, the challenge:
- book the most expensive train ticket possible
- take a screenshot (it should look like my $544.00 Amtrak trip above)
- list the route (if it's not explicit in the screenshot)
- show your proof in Kinja below.
And again, the limitations:
- The ticket must be one way. No round trip journeys.
- Absolutely private trains. I know the last time we had "no private planes," but private planes are so 20th century. If you have a private train, then damn, you've got a lot of money, and/or you are the Dear Leader of North Korea. You do you.
- The entire journey must take place on a train. You can't take some section of the journey by bus or plane.
- You can only book from one city to another. You're allowed connections, but you're not allowed to route yourself through multiple stops. Let's say you book from New York to Los Angeles and it wants you to stop over in Chicago and Salt Lake City. That's fine. You just can't book a multi-city flight from New York to Los Angeles to Chicago to Salt Lake.
So that's that. I'm sure you can find a much more expensive, and much longer trip than my example from New York to New Orleans. I just chose it because it's something I've always wanted to do, but requires you to have an extra day just to travel and also a willing partner who likes hanging out with you in a box for 30 hours.
Have at it!