Hello to you beautiful people across the pond especially hardworking families who use public transport !?

carolel6938 · 01-03-2008, 03:55 AM

I am so happy on yahoo! answers I have learned that in the USA there are good, decent, honest, hardworking and caring people who respect marriage and the family and want the best for their kids ! GREAT !To be honest, looking at TV we get a wrong impression, but thanks to yahoo! answers I know now this is not at all true !GREAT !So i want to come back for a family holiday. Please could you let me know how much i need, we want to travel on Amtrak and explore, sleeping mainly on the trains and sometimes in a Motel (near to a station of course). How is the public train and bus service these days ? Will all doctors and hospitals accept our european travel insurance? How much are decent restaurants and diners (eg. rice and fish, how much) and how about the homeland security (will we have to give fingerprints) How about if we fly to Canada and sleep on the train to US?Do some states have gun free zones ? Is it safe to walk around at night in small towns ? Is it family friendly ?Thanks !

carnaby_fudge · 01-03-2008, 04:05 AM

I suggest you peruse wikitravel.I had a little trouble deciding whether your question was real or not, but in case it is - your general impression is what Hollywood tries to sell you. The US is no more like Survivor than the UK is like Big Brother. It is seedy entertainment and nothing more. It would be like me basing my cultural understanding of China from goofy old kung fu movies. The US is an enormous place and to travel all over and see different places would require at LEAST a month. If you want to just ride across it in a train budget at least 10 days. The train is not the best way to see the US. You can see a lot of it, but outside of large cities public transportation is usually poor. This is because the US has evolved as a car-based culture. You are probably going to find it cheaper to rent a car and pay the $40 a day - split amongst a family it's not that bad. Most US cities are safe to walk around in at night, especially if you are not alone. But every place is different. It is a wildly varied country with anything from desert, swamp, mountains and grassland, inner city scariness and total wilderness. Check out wikitravel for the different places.EDIT your fear of guns is seriously overblown by the media. I have lived in the US for many years and I have, aside from a police officer, only once seen a person carrying a gun in public. ONCE.

CarolH · 01-03-2008, 04:14 AM

Our public transit is NOT the best. Nothing like you have in Europe. I'd do a lot of investigating before I'd put my money on an Amtrack ticket!

carnaby_fudge · 01-03-2008, 04:24 AM

In the USA, only "POOR PEOPLE" use public transport .. any (since no-one wants to live next to a railway line), trains stop at the roughest / least desirable parts of town ..