Plans are afoot!

[gridlore]

During a lull in today's activities (my truck is getting a scheduled maintenance, we got my new watch resized, Barnum got an oil change, and right now Kiri is having her hair redone) I'm starting to do some research on flights for Anticipation.

The current plan is to fly into New York City (possibly getting together with fimbrethil et al for a quick visit), take the train up to Albany, where we would meet up with jarlsberg71 and drive the rest of the way. The con itself is August 6th - 10th, so I want to leave on the 3rd (morning flight) with the plan being to overnight in Albany, then not have to race up to The Great White North. Coming back would be a reverse of the previous trip. Car, train, the fly out of NYC on the 13th.

Alternately, I've found that we can fly to Montreal's Trudeau International Airport with a layover in Detroit for about the same price as going through NYC. The layover going back is 3.5 hours.

On the gripping hand, we could fly into Albany, meet up with John and then do the drive.

No matter what option we choose, airfare alone is going to be about a grand.

I'm doing this all through Orbitz. Anyone have a site they prefer?

Comments

[slrose.livejournal.com]

Albany to Montreal isn't a bad drive; I've driven up the last three years. [150 miles from home to Albany, spend the night; 220 miles to Montreal. Straight up 87 til it changes to 15 at the border.]

The delay at the border has ranged from a couple of minutes to close to an hour.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

I'd like to do that simply because I've never been to upstate New York and enjoy looking at scenery. The downside, of course, is coordinating getting from JFK/LGA to Penn Station after flying across North America on an early flight.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Our (Lisa and my) tentative plan is to take the train: Emeryville-Chicago-Albany-Montreal, with an overnight hotel stay at each connection to allow for Amtrak's unreliability. My only question at the moment is what hotels, if any, are near the Rensselaer - Albany, NY station.

For two people, the rail fare is not bad (about $500/person total), but the accommodations charge (for the bedroom on the train) is about $1000/person total -- that is, around $3000 round-trip for two people. That includes all meals on the trains, but doesn't include meals and hotel nights at Chicago and Albany each direction.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

I looked into the train option, but the issue is getting the time off for the trip.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That's what I figured. It is, after all, 4-5 days each direction. Coming back, we might be able to avoid the layover days because the connection times look more likely, but even so, I would need to take two solid weeks off from work. I can do that nowadays -- I did it this year and took three weeks last year for Japan -- but I've been with my company for 14 years. I know that I'm well off that way.

[john-appel.livejournal.com]

Take a look at Southwest, though you'll have to go directly to their website. They fly from several sites in the SF area to Albany. The NYC options are more limited - Islip, Long Island, almost smack in the middle of Long Island in fact. I don't recall if there's rail or subway access into NYC from the airport.

[freetrav.livejournal.com]

You don't want to fly in to Islip/MacArthur Airport if you're planning on going somewhere other than eastern Long Island. It's pretty far out, and if you're not driving to the city, you're taking a cab to the LIRR station and then riding the LIRR for two hours, possibly changing trains at Jamaica, into Penn Station.

If you fly into JFK, there's AirTrain from the terminal to the subway, and about an hour on the subway (no need to change trains except AT-to-Subway) to Penn Station; if LGA, it's bus-to-subway-to-Penn, and depending on which bus and which subway you end up with, you might have to change subway trains to get to Penn - but the total trip time will probably be slightly less from LGA.

EWR, there's AirTrain to Newark Penn Station, and you can get NJT trains there direct to Manhattan Penn Station.

[freetrav.livejournal.com]

BTW, if you're interested in a meetup in NYC, let me know; I can most likely arrange my schedule appropriately.