You Are Intrigued About Traveling By Train, But You Have No Idea Where To Begin

I am here to instruct you on how to use the website amtrak.com.

You might want to do a short trip your first time around, to get your feet wet.

Say you live in San Diego and want to go to Santa Barbara.

There are two ways to get where you are going, but we will choose the AMTRAK way, which is called the Pacific Surfliner.

It has less stops then the Metrolink trains and you will not have to deal with commuters. Both pluses in this still COVID world.

You type in your station of origin and chances are you will want to leave from the Santa Fe Depot by San Diego Harbor. The code for this leg is SAN.

Your destination also has several Santa Barbara choices, you want the one by the harbor, SBA.

Choose your date and then hit Find Trains.

In this example you have 3 Pacific Surfliner Trains that are a direct service for $45.
Down the list a bit there is one with 2 segments for $56 (A Pacific Surfliner out of San Diego and then you connect to the Coast Starlight in Los Angeles for the second leg).
The next option is mixed service (train and bus) for $45.
The last one of the night is 2 buses for the same price and you definitely don't want that.

You choose your train and that is it. Put in your payment information and all is well.

If you want to book a round trip, you would put in the return date when you place your choices in at the beginning of the process.

You then would chose your train for going to your destination and then after you do that you scroll down to the choices for your return trip. Remember, you want to make sure your times are reasonable, pick up and drop off times.

Chances are good that you will stay at least overnight for a trip of this length. Hotels are right down the street from the station, so it is not a difficult thing to do. Food is also right there, as is the Santa Barbara Pier.

Welcome to traveling by AMTRAK.