LIWINEDAD

  While Long Island remains the perfect place to live, work, and play, we still need to venture off LI to see Jack the Grandson, Bridget (Daughter), and son-in-law Stud Muffin (Anthony).  To try something different, we explored a more traditional method of traveling by train.  The travel time to Raleigh is about the same as the drive time, around 10 hours.  We opted to take a car into the city to avoid schlepping all the luggage on the LIRR.  Our jump-off point is the new Moynihan station in the old Farley Post Office building above Penn Station.  It is a beautifully done, bright, open, grand train hall and a large lounge overlooking the great hall.  The train departed on time and arrived within 5 minutes of its scheduled time; however, the return trip ran about 2 ½ hours late.  We booked ourselves into a comfortable sleeper compartment that included meals and a private bath.  A note on the cost, it was about 45% higher than Delta First class to Raleigh and 8 hours longer.  The views w