Greetings,
There really doesn't seem to be a good place to post about our Shosholoza Meyl trip on this board, but thought some might be curious. I'll just post a few words here and hope it's OK. If it's not, moderator please move or delete.
Boarding the train in Jo"burg was somewhat of a melee, but most of the crush was headed for the sitter class cars so it was OK. We found our room from a paper listing posted on a platform wall, we were in a 2-person coupe. There was a good bit of "track dust" on the seats, we went through a box of wipes cleaning the grime off the leatherette. We had our bench seat, a window, and a sink with a table that folded down over it. For 54R pp, the attendant made our beds up with sheets and blankets. I got the top bunk, which was 24" wide, so I guess I can consider myself prepared for an Amtrak Roomette upper bunk, as I believe those are also 24".
We were stopped about an hour and a half outside of Jo'burg and sat for about 3 hours. We ate a cheap but tasty dinner in the dining car, beef stew, and back in our room we enjoyed a bottle of wine we carried onboard. I had a very hot shower with good pressure in our car's shower room before bed. When we woke up, we were clearly very late (more than 4 hours), but we had no where to be so didn't mind. We had the full English b'fast in the dining car, 34R pp (about 3 dollars and 40 cents). Frankly, I was happy we were late because we got some daylight scenery. One annoyance was our car ran out of water overnight, so I couldn't brush my teeth and wash my face in our room.
Our return trip was similar and similarly late. I would take the Shosholoza Meyl again, especially since a ticket was only 30R more than a Greyhound bus ticket. Our round trip cost for two people was about 124USD. I hope we can take the train again while we're in SA.
There really doesn't seem to be a good place to post about our Shosholoza Meyl trip on this board, but thought some might be curious. I'll just post a few words here and hope it's OK. If it's not, moderator please move or delete.
Boarding the train in Jo"burg was somewhat of a melee, but most of the crush was headed for the sitter class cars so it was OK. We found our room from a paper listing posted on a platform wall, we were in a 2-person coupe. There was a good bit of "track dust" on the seats, we went through a box of wipes cleaning the grime off the leatherette. We had our bench seat, a window, and a sink with a table that folded down over it. For 54R pp, the attendant made our beds up with sheets and blankets. I got the top bunk, which was 24" wide, so I guess I can consider myself prepared for an Amtrak Roomette upper bunk, as I believe those are also 24".
We were stopped about an hour and a half outside of Jo'burg and sat for about 3 hours. We ate a cheap but tasty dinner in the dining car, beef stew, and back in our room we enjoyed a bottle of wine we carried onboard. I had a very hot shower with good pressure in our car's shower room before bed. When we woke up, we were clearly very late (more than 4 hours), but we had no where to be so didn't mind. We had the full English b'fast in the dining car, 34R pp (about 3 dollars and 40 cents). Frankly, I was happy we were late because we got some daylight scenery. One annoyance was our car ran out of water overnight, so I couldn't brush my teeth and wash my face in our room.
Our return trip was similar and similarly late. I would take the Shosholoza Meyl again, especially since a ticket was only 30R more than a Greyhound bus ticket. Our round trip cost for two people was about 124USD. I hope we can take the train again while we're in SA.
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