20 Must Have Items For Your Next Amtrak Train Trip

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we have a list of 20 things you must have for your Amtrak trip [Music] all right so uh we use all of these items that we're gonna go over today and we get lots of questions about these items you guys are very observant in our videos right we get a lot of comments about some of the things like oh what was that white thing when you were doing this so there's a lot of questions about these things so we're going to show you what all of them are now um to get these items if you want to get these exact items that we use just go straight to our website groundedlifetravel.com we'll also put a link to the article on our website that has the link to all of these specific items so that'll make it super easy for you right and by we I mean Rob did it because he does all the technical stuff on the website so the very first thing that we get the most Millions I feel like Millions probably not but it feels like millions of requests for the link to this guy this is our universal adapter and as you can see it has all the different it looks kind of funky right well that's because you can use it in pretty much any country in the world so it has these little uh sliders right here where you can use it in the USA and Australia UK and EU and then of course the corresponding other countries as well like Asia and they just slide right out and then you've got your adapter right there but why we use this on the train is because of this on top so up here you can see that there are four USB ports and this is amazing because as you know if you've seen a tour of our uh rooms room tours on the trains you'll know that there's usually only one two at the most but usually only one in a room at outlet and so these guys really help us because of course we're always charging like a million things different cameras phones computers all kinds of batteries and things so this is uh one of our best friends this adapter universal adapter so make sure you guys grab one of those if you're gonna be on the train and you have more than one thing to charge and that's about twenty dollars uh they come in packs of one or two you only need one because there's only one in an outlet on the train so you're not gonna be able to use two for the most part so that is a must-have if you if you don't have that you're gonna be trying to just charge things all night if you have two people with two trying to rotate them yeah you gotta rotate you'll be waking up in the middle of the night to plug stuff in no good yeah get one of those this is perfect it'll solve all your amps and not only do you have those four USB ports but while you're using the ports you can also use the front as well as well so you can charge five things which I'm not gonna lie to you we have done before yeah because we were charging stuff and then I took a shower and I was gonna try to dry my hair so I plugged my hair dryer into this item two this is Ali's item and these are the Bose sleep buds too uh you do not want to get the Bose sleep buds one but you want to get to those sleep buds too tell us why you love it okay I love these little guys look at how tiny they are they fit right into my ear and they have this little Loop that makes it super easy to just pop right out but they're noise canceling um earbuds and the thing is is you could just use any um you know kind of headphones or like air pods I have all those things but these have a um a battery that lasts more than 12 hours so the problem if you use like air pods or your headphones is your battery is only going to last anywhere from 48 hour four to eight hours depending on what you have so these are the ones for you I like to sleep in now that I don't have to get up at any particular time and especially on the train I like to sleep in I don't know why that is um but I don't know if it's just because I'm comfy and cozy but I do like I love these I love these all the time but there is one thing about those you can't listen to music on that you cannot no no they are all cancellation and neutral and you can CH you choose the uh the the sound and you choose the volume so you can have it real loud or you can have it just moderate just depends on how much you want to hear while you have these on so yeah you can oh you can't use these as a replacement so I do still have my my um you know earphones another big question we get is what camera do we use people want to document their trip so this is what we currently have and this is the GoPro HERO Black and this is the nine uh they just came out with the 11. so we're actually gonna buy that is almost no different than the nine is breaking we've dropped it several times multiple times yeah we have two of them actually and we've dropped them both multiple times so so we're gonna get an 11. hopefully not drop it for a few months but it just comes with the camera which is this and then we also have on The Mod case which is the case around it and that allows you to put this light on which we honestly don't really use very often if you see like a weird uh kind of light on our video it's probably because we have that probably because we use that and then this microphone externally just provides Better Sound we do use that and then this is uh like a grip and it folds out into a tripod also so yeah I do love that we can set it on the table when we're eating dinner or something but you've probably if you've been on the trains with us you probably saw this sitting on the table as a tripod kind of set out like that sitting at the table while we were recording ourselves eating a meal so that's a good camera uh we talk about a lot about having a food bag or something you can just take your overnight bag overnight stuff snacks whatever and this is what we use it's the Columbia uh 30 liter duffel bag and I know that doesn't look very exciting does it until you unzip it that's what I love about this bag is we travel with this all the time if you guys know we travel full-time so this is actually super helpful when we're trying to take a short trip within a big trip and we can leave our stuff somewhere so this just stuffs itself into itself and it's actually a bag a big duffel bag it's pretty big which is really nice and it has a little zip pocket here for quick access stuff and then the pocket that we stuffed it in is the pocket that's inside so this is actually where the bag lives is in this pocket here um within the bag so this is actually fantastic to have with you if you travel at all even not even just for the train we use this you'll you'll likely see us with this on the train this is our overnight bag that we keep in our room with us with all of our overnight stuff pajamas slippers my sleep buds all that good stuff next up we have another bag which is my camera bag and this is a low Pro bag and it's got basically room in there we generally keep our GoPro and our cameras in here and I generally throw any other electronics that I want to take with us we get a lot of questions about locking the doors on the roommates or even if you're in coach and you want to go to the dining car the cafe people are always concerned because you can't lock a room at door when you leave you you have to leave all your stuff in the room and yes someone could come by open the door and take something out now that is pretty unlikely to happen we've never even heard of it happening but if you have expensive stuff when we go to uh a meal go to the dining car go the observation car this is the bag just don't leave anything expensive in your room put it in a bag like this you can take it with you and you're good to go you don't have to worry about it so easy peasy and this does also come with the it comes with a divider like a velcro divider in the middle here but we don't use it because we keep all our stuff laying down stacked up in there because we shove so much of our stuff in there to keep with us on the train let's talk about the bathroom because you got to be prepared for the bathroom or you're gonna have a mess so the first thing is you gotta have your hands free in the bathroom because the train is going to be going back and forth and you may need to brace the wall and you can't be holding things I feel like it's a run but Connor's tiny well it can be it can it can the counter is Tiny there's not a lot of room to set stuff so you do not want to be holding your toiletry bag like under your arm or something that's where this thing comes into yes so this is Rob's toiletry bag and I'll spare you seeing the inside that is as it is as I would refer to it a bit untidy but um if you open it's actually not that bad um if you open it up see these are all Band-Aids um but if you open it up like this you'll see it does have a hook and there is a hook on the back of the bathroom door easily you can hang that and then you don't have to worry about this falling onto the floor in the bathroom like yeah you really don't want your toiletries on the floor in the bathroom you do need one that hangs perfect yeah and it's a really nice bag it's it's Compact and just enough room for all your stuff isn't it it is yeah because if it if it's open like that and it's hanging when you're like using your toothpaste then you can just put it back in instead of having if you like try to set stuff on the counter and it hits a bump that's gone that's on the floor and you're not gonna want it's gonna be gone to use that second thing is when you're going to the bathroom you want to have flip-flops and if you're on the upper bunk like I am usually or always and you're or you're on the lower bunk you just want to set your flip-flops right at the bottom right next to the door so in the middle of the night you don't have to spend a lot of time trying to find shoes because you you can't sleep with these up there but you just need something small so these are what I wear and they are the Billabong flip flops got them right from Amazon I think they're 29 they've been pretty good it looks like it's time for new ones yeah but they've been very good so there's that yeah uh we the next thing we have is we get a lot of questions about is our backpacks yes and we definitely uh purchase these with intent because they are special to us so this one is mine this is the endurax a little bit it's a big backpack yeah the reason that I have this backpack is that I carry a lot of electronics I actually carry I actually carry our Xbox with us which is what we use to watch TV we're in hotels and stuff um computers cameras and everything but the thing about this backpack is this is a hard show so uh and that is great water resistant and then at the top there's a hard shell here too so anything I put in there it's not going to get crushed and you never really know when you're gonna have to squeeze it into a tight space I have had backpacks in the past I used to have a Microsoft Surface I put in a backpack and the backpack the surface cracked it was terrible yeah that was sad that was bad and I'm going to show you one more thing about this backpack that I have attached to it here which is this little guy yeah maybe we can pull it off yeah probably easier I'll let you show it okay so you know often I don't know about you guys but we like to have a straw instead of drinking out of a out of a glass A lot of times we find ourselves um wanting a straw and so this little tube you just unscrew it and this guy is a nice metal straw that you can have with you at all times and it comes we actually bought the kit with two of them and again that's on on the website groundlifetravel.com we bought the kit that brings two of them so we each have our own and it comes with the little brush that you clean these with as well and it comes with see these blue little tips it's soft so that you don't like you know Crush crunch your teeth on there or something because that doesn't feel great either on these metal ones and so it has that little tip on there and then you can actually make it any size so if you have a small glass then you can make it smaller or you can fully extend it totally up to you but it fits perfectly and you get it all nice and clean and with the little you know rubber tip on the top it's perfect and ta-da look at how easy that is and Rob just has his on his backpack I do on mine as well because it makes life so much easier so he showed you his I'm going to show you my backpack as well it's a little bit different now obviously I've had this for a while one of the things I like to get when we're traveling abroad is if I see a really cool pin so that's what all the pins are if you see me on the train I'm more than happy to explain them all to you but I have all these fun things on here this is my straw is in here um and so it has all these quick zipper pockets and it also has a safety pocket inside and it has this padding in the back as well and then for me is important to have this strap here that hooks onto the handle of the suitcase so that is the perfect backpack for me a little bit different than Rob's backpack um you know we each have different purposes right yeah yeah and mine backpack also that hard surface is actually used to launch a drone so that's also pretty cool which we have done which we have done a lot so now the next thing I'm wearing and it is this cardigan why because I'm always cold and one of the things we talk about um if you saw in our recent video um Unwritten rules of Amtrak one of the things was about the temperature and uh you know instead of me going around complaining about how I'm cold all the time can they make it warmer and then make everybody else in the train car sweat I carry this with me and I've got long sleeves if I want them or if I just wanted to cover my shoulders because I'm wearing a short sleeve shirt or whatever I have that with me and this is nice and warm and sometimes I even sleep with it if I think it's cold in you know in the the train car as well so this is really nice and then the other thing I always have with me as well and this is usually tied to the top of my backpack is this scarf so this is also it's a wrap scarf you can pashmina whatever you call whoops sorry that's not the first time that's happened notice he barely moved um you can just wrap that around yourself nice and comfy and you give yourself a little extra layer if you don't want to wear something like this cardigan that I have on so that's another option as well like I said I always have that with me in case of emergencies this is Ally's neck pillow and this is important because you never know when you're going to want to sleep sitting in coach or even just in the room at we'll use them if you want to sit up or like you want a little extra you know support for your neck or sometimes the pillows can be a little bit soft on the train as well I squish this and put it underneath the regular pillow if I want to be elevated a little bit more like if I feel the pillow's a little bit too soft so that is something I really enjoy and obviously I like cats and that's why I chose this one ha ha shout out to fellow cat lovers I can't own one we have another electronic what's inside it's my Kindle so it's uh I'm in the middle of reading a book but this is the Kindle Oasis and I really like this one because it's you can switch sides so see how if I switch it because so if you're right-handed or left-handed you can switch which way you hold it and the buttons front and back and it also is waterproof as well which is super helpful for me when we're traveling and I love to to read so I've always got you know quite a few books loaded on here so if you love to read and you travel or you like you know you move around a lot and you don't want to have the actual paperback books this is the way to go yes I would prefer to be reading a real book and the smell of the pages I really love that but unfortunately that's one of the things I have to give up but this is a good compromise because I can have my books with me all the time easy breezy and you know what's amazing too is I love how long the battery lasts on this um and just that you know that I don't worry about I could read for a week and not have to worry about charging it sometimes longer one of the things you may notice in our videos is that Ali is always facing forward this is the way the train is going and I'm always facing backward and the reason is is that she gets motion sickness I do not get any type of emotions at all and so we have to combat that and so but there are times when she is facing backwards and if that happens she does start to feel sick so what do we have for that yes so I you've probably heard me talk about this before or if you've you know sent in a comment on one of our videos asking what it is that I do for motion sickness now we figured it out pretty early that sitting facing the direction of travel really helps me personally but every once in a while we end up going the wrong way that happened to us one time I think in Spain where the train was going in the opposite direction and they didn't switch the car so anyways I use these ginger chews it's basically just like a dehydrated Ginger and it just really helps to settle your stomach these are extremely helpful I do not travel anywhere without a baggie of these as a matter of fact I ran out of the ones that I buy at home off of Amazon and actually bought these in Italy so these are these are ginger chews from it Italy but I have these with me all the time cannot travel without them absolutely not this is another must-have item it is a portable charger and plug it there it looks like this and so you can see we have 67 battery left on this thing right now it's awesome what it comes with is just a couple USB ports you can plug stuff into so you charge this up on an outlet and then it holds a battery and it'll charge a lot of stuff it'll charge a couple phones yeah and anything yeah so it'll charge um up to two things at once it does have three slots so we've upgraded this one we used to have the one that was just USB this one has USB USBC USB and it does have a little flashlight in there as well if you hit the on button twice the flashlight here turns on in case you need it for something um and then as Rob showed you earlier it shows you on the screen here what percentage you have left so this is really fantastic really good company really great product and we love that it does have the USBC because quite a few things these days are switching to the USBC so you're it's nice to have that as a matter of fact Rob's phone charges with USBC so that's one of the main reasons his new phone so one of the main reasons why we switched is so that we could charge his phone as well so we can actually charge both of our phones he has an Android I have an apple we can usually charge them both at the same time and sometimes we even charge other things like the batteries to the go GoPro it really is a great battery pack it lasts it can charge two phones completely to 100 if they were like drained off of one charge yeah so it's really good nice product uh next up is the hand sanitizer wipes that's going to be pretty self-explanatory just bring some with you well you know sometimes one of the main things I think I end up using these for is the table in the room um you know sometimes people I think forget to tidy up after they've had their meal hint hint if you've ever done that um to go ahead and wipe it down but sometimes it'll be like you know like if the train is bumping around and stuff and you're having a meal sometimes you know if you have a drink it'll spill out spill your juice or coffee or soda or whatever onto there so these are great to just wipe things down and keep things clean in your room as you go then we have entertainment purposes we have a tablet that we bring and this is a Samsung Galaxy S6 plus I think S6 plus we've had it for several years it works fine I think with a tablet you don't really have to have the newest Greatest Latest one because I'm just watching videos on it on the train and sound isn't that important because you're most experiencing the Caboose but I I wash stuff on this at night up on the uh and sometimes we'll watch a movie together yeah and it's great so yeah you can have an iPad you can have this like she said all my stuff is Android so this is Android tablet she has an iPad Mini right yeah I do I have an iPad mini and but this is bigger so we'll use this one yes we use that to watch movies and then like at night one of the other things you really need to think about is snacks on the train and so we like to have something that has protein this is what I am currently going with this is the grenade carb killer fudge brownie flavor it's pretty good yeah uh and you they have all different flavors we also like the nugo bars for that if you can get those oranges good yes so orange smoothie is your favorite and then we also like to have some fruit because that's tough to get on the train and so we travel with this dried fruit and this is uh dehydrated mango we also definitely carry the strawberries strawberries sometimes cherries yeah and that is that is great so I think that has covered everything is there anything so we no no there's one more thing no we have to do the water bottle oh yes yes the uh Ally has this swell water bottle and my current one there was a mishap with my last bottle good break it was actually on the same train that Rob lost his Expos had that was bad it was the elastic a bad train ride it's good to have a water bottle with you this this one will keep the water uh quite cold cold for a while yeah which is really nice um because you do get I mean it depends on how you like your water sometimes I like room temperature and it's room temperature when you get it in the room but if you ask for ice you can get ice as well um and get cold water but I always have water with me anyways because we're always you know thirsty always moving about or whatever or just want something to drink after we had a snack so it's really good to um to have a water bottle I'm going to mention one more thing and this isn't something you need to have with you but we get a lot of questions questions about this so I'll try to answer it for everybody right here for all this most well really just ladies have asked me this question but a lot of people ask me about my Wonder Woman bracelet and someone even offered to buy off of me um but this is Alex and Ani Alex a-l-e-x and Ani Ani is the company that makes it and it came out when the first Wonder Woman just came out I think 1983 I think it was the name of the movie Wonder Woman 1983. um it came out then and I think they just sold out of them I've tried to track them down to send people the link I can't find them anywhere so I don't think you can find them anywhere and the answer is no I will not sell you mine because it was a gift from Rob eBay but you might find them on eBay but I do get so many questions about that bracelet and thank you I do love Wonder Woman so that is everything that we travel with that is special for Amtrak and if you're going on Amtrak pick up a few of these things that that are gonna suit your your Chase because they will make your trip that much better and most this stuff is pretty cheap yeah Electronics Electronics uh yeah it's gonna make your experience a whole lot better if you have things that you can't live without put that in the comments too for other people to see I know some people are going to say duct tape ah yes but you don't generally travel with Duncan tape we just let it ride as far as the stuff rattling or the air conditioning I never really wanted to revert the air from the top bunk I always want it cold up there and people generally use duct tape to block the air so not a problem I don't use duct tape for that but I know that's when the other people like to use so yeah good well hopefully this is helpful to everybody um answers all of your questions of all of the items you guys are seeing in our videos and asking us about trying to get them all into one video for you as I mentioned it is over on blog at groundedlifetravel.com and we'll also link the article in the description of this video as well and so you click the link to the the article and all of the items will be listed there thank you guys so much for watching we will catch you on our next video

Channel: Grounded Life Travel

Views: 57,453

Keywords: amtrak, amtrak train trip, amtrak packing tips, amtrak sleeper car, packing for amtrak trip, how to pack for an amtrak train trip, how to pack for an overnight train trip, amtrak california zephyr, amtrak coast starlight, amtrak sunset limited, amtrak empire builder, amtrak crescent, amtrak southwest chief, amtrak how to pack, how to pack for amtrak, amtrak packing, 20 must have items for your next amtrak trip, amtrak roomette, amtrak bedroom, amtrak coach, amtrak coach class

Id: 8Z9FKwos7O8

Length: 28min 2sec (1682 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022