10:00 p.m. Dinner was quite the excursion! Access to the dinner car was through the upper deck.
Note: The doors are operated by a large black button (about eight inches square) that you press (more like punch).
At 5:30, it was sparsely populated, and elegantly decorated with table linens, flowers and menus. Playing the ignorant tourist to a T, I asked a dumbfounded waiter how to make reservations. He had reservations available for 5:45 so we were given a card to confirm that. Since it was 5:34, we decided to wander to an empty booth and browse the menus. Such rebelliousness seemed to startle a staff member who walked by and wondered aloud why we were there.
Surprise - there's no such thing as "private dining." Three minutes later we were ushered from our empty booth, past several other empty booths, and seated with two ladies who were strangers to each other. I wouldn't have chosen that arrangement for myself, but what luck it turned out to be!
"Paula" was most fascinating. A fiftysomething independent photographer, she hailed originally from Mississippi and lives in Las Vegas, New Mexico but had lived in several places with odd jobs. Dinner and dessert were delicious, but it was the company that made the four hours fly by. The details would be exhaustive here, so only the highlights:
- adventures with rattlesnakes and grizzly bears
- Lutheran seminary
- toxic content of train "tank" cars
- Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, Clinton, Obama and McCain
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- Mississippi River bridges that turn sideways to yield to ships
No comments:
Post a Comment