Planes, Trains and Automobiles!

Friday, September 11, 2009
After a long and wonderful nap, Rhonda and I woke up ready to begin our exploration of the Northeast. Our first task was to figure out how to travel. Renting a car in Providence and returning it in Boston more than doubled our rental car expenses, so that option was out. Renting a car in Providence and returning it in Providence was a great idea, and cheaper than our Boston option, but Delta refused to change our departure tickets so that we could leave out of Providence instead of Boston. In then end, we came up with a rather convoluted, but workable, option.

At 10:47am we decided that we would catch a cab to the Providence Amtrak Station and take a train to Boston. The only problem we could see was the departure time of the train. It was scheduled to leave at 11:49am, and we hadn't even showered. This test of time proved to me that Rhonda and myself as a team are truly amazing. We managed to shower, get our makeup on, dry our hair, get dressed, repack our suitcases, catch a cab and ride to the station (which took about 20 minutes), find the train we needed to be on and buy tickets all with at least 10 minutes to spare before departure. Like I said, truly amazing!

The ride to the Amtrak station was interesting. We saw a couple of windmills, the Capitol building and weren't even scared of the cabbie's driving. We purchased our tickets for the train journey for $7.50 each and we were on our way.







We got off the train at the Boston South Station. It didn't take us long to find the place to buy our tickets for the bus that would take us from South Station to Boston Logan Airport. We bought our $2 Charlie Card that would allow us to take the Silver Line bus to Logan and went down to the waiting area.



It only took a few minutes for the bus to arrive and we were off to the airport. We jumped off the bus and saw the Budget Rental Car shuttle getting ready to leave. The driver saw us and stopped to let us on and after a couple of stops, took us to our car. I somehow managed to register for their FastTrak program, so the keys were in the car waiting for us. All we had to do was load up and go. They upgraded us to a Saturn Vue. It was cute, but by the time we made it to the Cape I was wishing for a bigger engine!



Speaking of Boston traffic... That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It was crowded, but not ridiculously so. The traffic seemed to be moving along pretty well, but, for some reason, people would slam on their brakes and slow down unexpectedly. Neither Rhonda nor I ever saw the reason for all of these slowdowns, but they were annoying. We finally made it to the Sagamore Bridge that put us officially on the Cape.



Another thing that surprised this pair of Southern girls was the lack of scenery on Highway 6. My advice to anyone traveling into Cape Cod is this: Take Highway 6A. There is a lot more to see...

This map shows a total layout of our travels while we were in the Cape.


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