Why Amtrak is Whack

This morning, the Mr. and I were poised and ready to reclaim our spontaneous selves and hop an Amtrak from NYC to Philly today for a trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum. The purpose of the planned trip was be two-fold -- first, we wanted to test the Toddler's tolerance for a 1.5 hour train ride (with the highest hopes that this would be the magic transit bullet that would open up new venues of toddler traveler). Second, we wanted to see the Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose exhibit at the museum.

Well, after some initial confusion where we thought the $80 one way fare was round trip (totally the Mr.'s fault), we discovered it would cost us more than $200 round trip! Since that was really just too much to justify indulging our curiousity about how the Toddler would behave on the train, we scratched our spontaneous plan and opted to drive to the Bronx Zoo (with all of the other tri-staters who don't have houses in Litchfield, Ct, the Hamptons or the decidedly less glamours Jersey Shore.)

I suppose we could have opted to drive to the Nandalal Bose exhibit but the Toddler isn't great on road trips and the prospect of driving anywhere near the shore on the weekends gives me traffic-induced PTSD. The good news is that in spite of Amtrak's outrageous fares, we still experienced a train today -- the $3 tram in the South Asian animal exhibit. The Toddler loved the train but the rarity of the zoo's family of rhinos seemed lost on him as he kept repeatedly wildly pointing out every pigeon that had managed to earn itself scavenger status among the real zoo animals.

In all seriousness, the Bronx Zoo is a really fantastic day trip for the kids -- lots of shade, paved paths that are at least three strollers wide in most spots and kid-friendly cafeteria-style lunch stands. What more could you ask for (other than the Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose exhibit)?