Amtrak’s sleeping cars
Never let it be said that Amtrak has to start offering 21st-century service, said David Netto in The Wall Street Journal. The “quasi-national” railroad may deny its public fast trains, warm food, and consistently attentive service, but my family has discovered that we’d rather take an overnight Amtrak than travel this country any other way. This isn’t about saving money: “There’s no point in doing trains on the cheap.” When I travel with my wife and two young daughters, we get adjoining private suites, entitling us to four bunks, two fold-down tables, and “an incomparable feeling of coziness and well-being.” The Coast Starlight, which rattles north from Los Angeles to Seattle, is one of our favorite lines. Don’t expect luxury—not unless your definition includes “hours of endless quiet, talking to your children, and the blissful monotony that comes with staring at the unfolding American landscape.”
Dallas’s lake country
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
You actually can get outdoors during a Texas summer, said Andrea Sachs in The Washington Post. The Dallas–Fort Worth area can feel like a “giant fire pit” every time you venture outside an air-conditioned zone, but “Texas is big on water,” and the two sister cities are ringed by seven lakes that welcome swimmers. Though none are natural lakes, they’re fed by natural springs, creeks, or rivers, and every one can lower your “internal mercury.” At Grapevine Lake, I managed to score a secluded cove with my own covered picnic table. At playground-like Burger’s Lake, I watched braver bathers frolicking on five diving boards and three giant slides. As for real wildlife sightings, nothing topped my near run-in with a swimming beaver at Cedar Hill State Park. Mostly, I had to settle for trying to identify large birds flying overhead. “American—whoosh. Delta—whoosh.” For sure, there aren’t many egrets this close to an airport.
-
No Kings rally: What did it achieve?Feature The latest ‘No Kings’ march has become the largest protest in U.S. history
-
Bolton indictment: Retribution or justice?Feature Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, John Bolton, was indicted for mishandling classified information after publishing his ‘tell-all’ memoir
-
Chicago: Scenes from a city under siegeFeature Chicago is descending into chaos as masked federal agents target people in public spaces and threaten anyone who tries to document the arrests
