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I've done cross-country Amtrak travel multiple times and enjoyed it every time. You just have to be prepared for potential delays and willing to take it easy and roll with it. If you aren't in a hurry and see the trip as part of your vacation, then it's great.

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Exactly. Sometimes the mindset is to get somewhere fast. What we really want? A teleport. But we have to settle for air travel.

Whereas sometimes the mindset "the journey not the destination". That's when you can appreciate a train, ocean liner, bicycle, or feet.

Having said that, Acela is usually the best of both worlds.

And for Boston to New York, I really find it a lot more pleasant and almost as fast as flying--especially if you're going into Manhattan anyway. The only reason I'd fly to New York would be if I had a morning meeting and couldn't go down the night before for some reason.

That said, you go much further than New York and the train makes less sense either in terms of time or money.

I found the Acela north of New York (NY-Boston) to be great, but south of New York (NY-DC) my experience was a bone-rattling ride from hell. It was shaking so bad it threw my laptop off the table not once, but twice.

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