Our last night in Texas, sipping tea outside Jo’s on South Congress Ave. in Austin, we got talking to the young woman sitting with her smartphone next to us. She was a junior in high school, she told us, down from Fort Worth to have a look at the University of Texas. She was considering some other schools – the University of Georgia, the University of the South, Georgetown – but figured she’d probably end up, as her brother and her parents did, at UT. Her interest was in the classics; she studied Latin and was going on a summer trip to Italy and Greece – her first visit to Europe.
After about ten minutes of conversation she looked down at her phone and said, “I think my Uber driver is here.” She asked our names, put out her hand, and introduced herself as Katherine. This impressed us as much as anything we’d seen in our ten-day visit to Texas.
While reading about her far-flung experiences with simians, Leila came to the part where a monkey on Gibraltar reached into her bag and ran off with her husband’s ashes. An alarmed silence came over the room. Then she read the next sentence: “He would have loved it.”
I began my travel writing course on Wednesday and halfway through the class it occurred to me that there is no subject I would rather talk about – and that I almost never do so outside the classroom. The lament, no doubt, of much of the professorial community.
Last week I attended an event sponsored by a European tourism bureau. There was the usual mix of travel agents and travel writers, both groups, as usual, keeping to themselves. Watching the travel agents, one of the travel writers expressed surprise that they were still around. I wondered if they were thinking the same about us.
Tennis star John Isner, speaking to the New York Times Travel section: "When I'm taking a trans-Atlantic flight, or going to a different continent, I will always read because reading puts me to sleep."
Saturday morning of Miami Art Week 2017 – after fighting traffic, snagging the last spot in the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral parking lot, paying the attendant $20, and walking across the street to Art Miami – I thought: Next year we’ll be able to take the train.
A little before 10 on Saturday morning Hania and I drove to the Brightline station in Ft. Lauderdale. The parking garage, free the last time I took the train (on opening day), cost $6. We walked down the steps and into the station, where music blared for the Polar Express. A wall display for the special holiday train, inspired by the children’s book, covered up the charming wall maps of Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, and West Palm Beach.
Over the din, I told the woman behind the counter that I wanted two round-trip tickets for Miami, leaving on the 10:39 train.
“It’s sold out,” she informed me. “The next available train is at 2:39.”
I was in shock. On my evening bike rides I sometimes have to stop for the train, which never carries more than a handful of passengers. The woman explained that it’s more popular on the weekends, and led me to a computer screen that listed the day’s trains, their availability, and their cost. Next to my train manqué, I saw the figure of $20. I said that on the Brightline website, the price had been listed as $12. She showed me the trains, later in the day, that go for that fare.
I did a quick calculation: If we had been able to buy tickets for the 10:39 train, the cost of the round-trip journey to Miami would have been $80. Actually, $86 if you add in parking. We returned to the garage. On the way out, I told the attendant that he should ask people coming in if they had tickets for the train, because they were sold out until mid-afternoon. He said he didn’t know that, thanked me for telling him, and offered to take down my license number so I wouldn’t have to pay the next time I came. I politely declined, saying I wasn’t sure there would be a next time.
We drove to Miami listening to the music of Corelli. At 10:50, eleven minutes after the train left Ft. Lauderdale, we pulled into a Brickell parking garage that advertised a weekend rate of $10 a day. We grabbed an excellent lunch at La Centrale in Brickell City Centre and then took the Metro Mover to Art Miami. The elevated journey, over the river and through downtown, gave me the train fix I had been deprived of. And it did it for free.
I love trains; I don’t love cars. I was thrilled when Brightline started service, first to West Palm Beach and then to Miami. But unless the fares become reasonable, I will resign myself to watching it pass on my evening bike rides.