Travel Inspiration

Weekly Travel Inspiration: Grand Central Station

I finally changed my homepage away from my alma mater’s student life page, which I think is a positive step towards adulthood. NPR is my new homepage, which is great, except that every time I open up Firefox I am bombarded with interesting-sounding news stories, and I have to spend time learning before I can settle into blogging or checking my facebook.

That’s why today, your weekly travel inspiration is an article from NPR celebrating Grand Central Station’s 100th anniversary. It’s called The Ways We Wait, and focuses on the time we spend in train stations just biding our time. It includes a slideshow of photos of people hanging out in train stations during various decades and around the world.

This past Fall, I spent a fair amount of time in European train stations, and I rode 11 trains over the course of my trip. Of course, that doesn’t include all of the trams, metros, undergrounds and overgrounds I rode. I spent a lot of time waiting for trains at all hours of the day and night.

I’ve done some train travel in the United States, but nothing glamorous. The train station I’m most familiar with is either South Station in Boston or the Providence Station in my home state of Rhode Island because I’ve ridden the commuter rail between them many times. I haven’t been to Grand Central Station in about five years, and I think a trip to New York City might be in order whenever I’m back on the East Coast.

Have you ever been to Grand Central? Any fond memories of other trains or their stations?

Emma Holliday is well-traveled. After 5 years in Boston, she and her husband upended their lives to move to Berlin where she is currently writing a (funny) book about travel and grief and attempting to learn German.

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