You can get up in the morning in Montreal, pick up a coffee to go while wading through the slop with a duffel bag under your arm, buy a magazine and a sandwich in the great hall of Gare Centrale, hop on a train and spend the day working criss-cross-applesauce while looking out over Lake Michigan and the Hudson Valley swamps.
When you can’t feel your legs anymore, you arrive at Penn Station’s Moynihan Hall (right in the center of the Big Apple). And, in the evening, you can fall asleep like a baby in New York City.
The next morning, we get up early and visit the New Yorker exhibit at the New York Public Library, go to the Whitney, do the vintages of the Lower East Side – without the expense of the plane, without the almost obligatory delays of the night bus and without the uncertainty of waiting time at the border if we leave by car.
We’ll say wow, New York! But the kicker is that you can spend a weekend in New York for almost the same price as a bus trip from Montreal to Quebec City. It’s with Amtrak’s 69 Adirondack train, and it’s a great plan for a long weekend in one of the only cities as cool as ours.
69 Adirondack
All you need to do – if you’re a Canadian citizen – is pick up your tickets (from $145 CAD roundtrip) on the Amtrak website or at the Amtrak counter at Montreal’s Central Station (accessible from the Bonaventure metro station) and fill out an online application for an I-94 (which costs $30USD).
At the Canada/U.S. border, customs officers board the train and check passports. For Canadian passport holders, that’s all there is to it, and it’s incredibly quick and easy.
Foreign passport holders will also need to complete an ESTA (visa application).
All these documents and instructions for crossing the border are sent by Amtrak when we buy our tickets. We recommend printing everything out: tickets, ESTA and I-94 receipts. Better safe than sorry…
The train is called 69 Adirondack and goes straight down from Montreal to New York (with a few stops en route, including one in the very charming Hudson Valley) and will make a slightly longer stop in Albany, NY – so we can relax our legs.
Practical info
In high season (for the vacation season), a round-trip ticket will be more like $225, but if you buy train tickets in advance, the round-trip ticket is around $150.
website?amtrak.com
Have a nice weekend!