‘The romance of a sleeping car. The joy of pastries in the morning…’
- Amtrak brochure
American rail routes have irresistible names, like cocktails: the Empire Builder (Chicago to Seattle), the Twilight Shoreliner (Boston to Virginia), the Vermonter (Washington, DC to St Albans, VT).
I’d be taking the Coast Starlight, which ought to be a musical but departs Seattle at 09.45 daily, sometimes with icicles on, then melts south. Through Portland, Oregon, past the Cascade Mountains to San Francisco, skirting the Pacific down to Santa Barbara, due to arrive at Union Station, Los Angeles, not the next day but the day after.
The scenic route in every sense, a magnet for retired couples, backpackers, the odd wacky commuter, Whoopi Goldberg (hates flying, apparently) and people like me who don’t drive and always thought California, with all those highways and great big freeways, was out of the question. That still leaves several million US citizens who like their cars too much, and so Amtrak tries to lure Americans on board with the joy of pastries; if that fails, afternoon wine-tastings and the chance to ‘indulge your inner epicure’. Who could resist? In six days we’d go San Francisco to Santa Barbara to Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, I left my inner epicure in San Francisco. Somewhere between Chinatown, Japantown and an Aegean-Californian restaurant co-managed by a half-Italian Scot from Greenock called Tonino. (If LA obsesses about movie stars, here they gossip about chefs.) We stayed near the Museum of Modern Art at the elegant Argent Hotel – on the 33rd floor, in the town where James Stewart got vertigo; so high up they provide complimentary binoculars. The view: posh Nob Hill, a shimmering bay, green hills, Golden Gate too far to the left to see properly.
Take the boat out for a closer look and you’ll be accompanied by a docu-commentary that relives the 1906 earthquake (‘I was just cooking my rice...’), becomes existential as the boat lurches at the mouth of the Pacific, momentarily losing the sun under that rust-red span (‘Can a bridge have a soul? You decide!’), then takes you round the now closed Alcatraz with reminiscences of Frankie Gallows and Machine Gun Kelly. Today, you’re more likely to be mown down by one of the vintage trolley cars - beautiful 1920s and 30 cast-offs from Moscow, Blackpool, Brooklyn, Milan - that trundle down the city’s ski-jump hills like sideboards.
But we had a train to catch. Not from San Francisco itself, where trains don’t go, but a bus ride away, over the bay, past the University of California at Berkeley to the soulless new station at Oakland, rebuilt after the 1989 earthquake. A handful of us wait on a big empty platform; the track ripples in a heat haze. All that’s missing is tumbleweed. Then clanging signals, a real Casey Jones whistle and, coming round the mountain, a great silver train - a double decker - with 916 miles behind it already.
I’d imagined a state-of-the-art interior but the Coast Starlight is surprisingly clunky, and it’s burgers for lunch. Then off to the viewing lounge, where the windows wrap up into the roof. They’ve thought of everything here: swivel armchairs; little wooden rails to stop your drink falling off the window ledge; emergency Ludo in the corner. Afternoon wine-tasting kicks off, a deadpan barman describing grape varieties over the PA, and things get a bit giddy. The conversation degenerates from the zen of train travel to the time a large lady got stuck on a Starlight restroom facility (‘She created a sea...’)
What Amtrak should go big on isn’t pastries but the joy of peering into ordinary California backyards, all pool and no garden; old VW vans in a hippy heap outside of town; a full cemetery under the sprinkler; the prison compound miles from anywhere.
Further south, the Starlight snakes through rolling pasture reminiscent of the Teletubbies set, then hits the Pacific coastline at sunset. If all this doesn’t grab you, there’s a video room, a playroom for the little ones, and ‘bedroom’ compartments upstairs and downstairs: standard, deluxe (with ensuite shower), family and wheelchair-accessible. I try out a standard bunk and before I know it am rocked to sleep while hurtling feet-first down America.
Hitchcock thought San Francisco smug, but it does have a faultline. The truly blessed live in Santa Barbara. Once home of the Chumash Indians, then Charlie Chaplin, now a manicured enclave of Spanish architecture, old and retro; clinking yachts, boutiques, museums, bookshops with readings by local author John Cleese; caught between the Santa Ynez mountains and that rare thing in the States, a south-facing beach. This is lined with great tall palm trees, the perfect shade as you rollerblade to the office in hotpants.
We go whale-watching, on a 50ft catamaran full of eight-year-olds on a school trip and thirtysomethings clearing the cobwebs. The crew are young marine biologists who tell the kids all about blow holes then double as bar staff. We see bottle-nose dolphins and common dolphins and, finally, two grey whales arch out of the waves. One of them does a tail flip and everybody goes ‘Wooooo!’
Before Hollywood, Santa Barbara made westerns; now they’ve turned to wine. We visit the Gainey vineyard, one of 56 in the Santa Ynez valley, which produces 20,000 cases a year - not enough to export - using barrels of French white oak, for more subtle vanillas. Our guide says that, basically, wine happens because yeast wants sugar; he makes a ravenous, slurping, Hannibal Lecter sound to illustrate the point.
If you’re going to do a vineyard crawl, you’re advised to hire a driver, for obvious reasons. Though ours can barely contain himself as we hairpin up the mountains: ‘The flowers are just tearing me away from the road. I see the lupins are out. Oh, look at that wisteria...’ (lifting his hands off the wheel) ‘ ...gorgeous!’
It’s like a California Cotswolds round here: butterscotch cows, plus deer, llamas, ostriches; grass glossy as animal pelt; walnut groves; old clapboard villages such as Los Olivos and Ballard, with its striking red 1863 schoolhouse, and Solvang, built by Danes in 1921 - a Scandinavian home from home down to the last windmill and clog shop. In the middle of the valley, fenced off, is Michael Jackson’s 2,800-acre Neverland ranch.
Santa Barbara station brought the Rockefellers and Carnegies into town from the East Coast. It takes us south to LA, skimming the waves in business class on the new Pacific Surfliner (San Luis Obispo to San Diego), which has laptop powerpoints everywhere, at-seat audio and video, no Ludo. Anyway, the guard is distraction enough: ‘Oxnard is our next station stop. Smokers, you know the drill, this is your last chance to smoke a cigarette before Los Angeles Union Station. Don’t wander too far though!’ And later: ‘One passenger’s just pointed out, and I agree, that this is a good time to go see Bob in the buffet car... ’
Union Station is the last great American station, part Moorish, part art deco, built in 1939 on top of old Chinatown. Nothing else in LA feels quite so substantial. We get the subway to Universal Studios, where Jaws judders out of the water, King Kong looks cuddly even when raging, a ye olde London street is too sunny, and the Grinches have moved in next to the Bates Motel. Best of all, the only way to get yourself photographed in front of the famous Hollywood sign, other than standing in several lanes of traffic, is to pose here in front of a fake one.
Fact file
Amtrak’s (www.amtrak.com) statewide seven-in-21-day California rail pass includes a free one-day admission ticket to Universal Studios until the end of the year. The rail pass is valid for travel throughout California, including aboard Amtrak’s premier West Coast train, the Coast Starlight, and costs £128 per person for seven days’ travel within a 21-day period.
Return ticket with United Airlines (0845 844 4777; www.ual.com) travelling midweek into San Francisco and out of Los Angeles is £332 per person, including taxes (1 November-19 December departures).
A package holiday costs from £664 per person, including a return ticket; two nights at the three-star Canterbury Hotel in San Francisco; two nights at the three-star Best Western Pepper Tree Inn in Santa Barbara; and one night at the three-star Hollywood Roosevelt in Los Angeles; as well as the state-wide California rail pass. For bookings contact United Vacations on 0870 606 2222; brochure requests: 01235 824482; www.unitedvacations.co.uk.
