All Aboard! Surfliner to San Diego

For Memorial Day our family decided to take the train down to San Diego for the day.  Baby M loves trains and while we've ridden trains at parks, malls, farms, etc., we'd never taken him anywhere on a full sized train.   So on Sunday night we logged on to Amtrak.com and bought our Surfliner tickets-- 3 round trip tickets from Union Station to Solana Beach, where we would meet up with my family for a BBQ.  It turns out the tickets were a little more than I was expecting ($170 for the 3 of us) but at that point I had already talked up the trip to Baby M so there was no turning back.  

We arrived at Union Station 30 minutes before our train departed and parked in the $7 lot across the street.  Our train left right on time at 8:30AM.  Baby M loved seeing the big double decker train and the train tracks.  I loved the fact that we had plenty of room.  Our coach seats had so much leg room that the only way I could kick the seat in front of me was if I stretched my legs out and pointed my toes.  Baby M couldn't reach the folding tray table on the back of the chair in front of us, which the person seated there should be very grateful for.  Although most of the time there was no one seated in front of us or behind us.  The car remained pretty empty for the majority of the trip. We had brought our car seat along and it fit nicely on the floor in front of the seat next to me.  (There is no way to install the car seat on train, we just brought it to put in my parent's car in San Diego).  We rode past train yards, construction sites, recycling plants and Angel's stadium-- perhaps not terribly scenic, but totally interesting to a 2 year old boy.  Once we got down to Orange County we cut over to the coast and had a lovely ride along the beach.  We took a walk down to the cafe car, had a snack (they mostly had pre-packaged food items) and before we knew it the 2 hour 10 minute ride was over. 

Once in Solana Beach we walked down to the beach and Baby M played on a nearby playground.  As an aside, there was tons of free beach parking-- I couldn't believe it.  You never see that in LA!  Then we headed over to my parent's house for a traditional Memorial Day BBQ.  We came back to the station just before 7pm to catch our train home and were disappointed to find that the train was delayed.  We stood on the platform for 30 minutes watching the Estimated Arrival Time increase in 2 minutes increments until finally it held steady at 7:36pm.  Entertaining a toddler on a cold, narrow train platform is a challenge and this was the low point of our trip.  If we had known how long the train was going to be delayed we would have waited in the station, but since the ETA was changing every couple of minutes we were never sure.  Once the train finally arrived we were back home in a little over 2 hours.

Traveling by train is actually a great option for toddlers.  They aren't confined to the car seat, can walk around to the different cars, eat snacks as needed and visit the toilet whenever they want.  As parents you don't have to deal with surly security agents eyeing your sippy cup or a packed cabin full of harried passengers.   Since Baby M does fairly well on a 2-3 hour car ride, we probably won't take the train to San Diego too often, but I would definitely consider it for trips to San Francisco or other towns in Northern California.