Penn Station

When we traveled on our Royal Pain adventure, we had to pass through Penn station on four different occasions. Although, it was not my first time to travel by train, not by a long shot, it was my first time to experience Penn station and it's weird little idiosyncrasy.

There is no regular schedule for which track a train will be arriving or leaving on. Yes, the trains are roughly on schedule time wise, but it's all a suspenseful surprise as to where you are supposed to be when actually catching a train. They have these big signs with the destinations posted on them and a blank spot beside them for the track number. A great crowd of humanity stands in front of the signs staring at them intently, then at approximately ten minutes before the train is scheduled to leave the station, the number of the track appears on the board. As soon as it appears, there is a great surge of the crowd while everyone makes a mad dash through the appropriate door, down the escalator (or stairs when the escalator is not working, which happened more than once), and onto the train.

Apparently, people-who-know-best have decided that this is the most efficient way to handle the train traffic and make it more fun for people-traveling-with-suitcases.

There are no pictures of this event because this person-traveling-with-suitcases was afraid she might miss the all important first viewing of the track number and mad dash to the track.