After the scenic, but rather uncomfortable train journey in Peru (especially on the way back) I expected our 51-hour train ride from Louisiana through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to California to be a nice experience, but still kind of the challenge. In the end we had a wonderful journey and the time could not have passed more quickly.

We were driven to the station by the manager of our hostel and since we had already checked in the heavy bags we just had some light luggage. We got two seats, but there was a lot of free space on the train. This was a real big train (two levels) with sleeping cars, a restaurant car, and a cafe/lounge car with panoramic windows and nice seats to watch the landscape slide by. People were chatting with each other especially in the lounge car and we had some nice conversations. As usually there were many older people on the train, which is very understandable in my opinion. If you have time, Amtrak is probably the most comfortable, convenient and budget way to travel. We slept pretty well on two seats each, enjoyed the tables and leg space to actually get some work done (we both had to catch up on our blogs and sort our pictures among answering mails and contacting people offering rooms in Goleta).

The train was pretty slow at times and during the journey we were running about two hours late because of freight traffic ahead of us (most parts of the route were single-tracked and all tracks are owned by railroad companies, that make their money with freight and have to grant Amtrak the right to use their tracks – since they get no money for that they are not particularly interested to get Amtrak trains through on time). The train schedule includes several time buffers though, so we eventually arrived in Los Angeles an hour earlier than planned. There we boarded the next train straight to Santa Barbara, our checked luggage was transferred – that’s an amenity I would love to have in Germany as well. The next train went along the coastline all the time, so we  spent most of the journey in the lounge car. There we met a Professor from San Diego who invited us to visit him – I hope we’ll get the chance to do that as San Diego looks very interesting and is actually the second biggest city of California (we were surprised by that).

After the more than 2000 miles (3200 km) ride we arrived just a little late in Santa Barbara. We had some problems getting our luggage (we were waiting at the wrong spot) and then walked to the rental car company.