8 Reasons to Take a Train This Summer

With planes, your journey starts when you land. With trains, your voyage begins once you board. Yes, trains are slow, but that’s the point, says Slow Travel Europe: “Speed destroys the connection with the landscape. Slow travel restores it.” Slow Movement also says that slow travel reconnects you with people and culture. Curt Fettinger, a Seattle-based IT professional and a train aficionado who rode Amtrak the first day it started operating on May 1, 1971, and says he has ridden nearly every route since then, finds rail travel more pleasant and more interesting. “You’re not stuck in a tiny seat and you can get up and move around,” he says. “People tend to let down a little bit on trains and talk to each other.”

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