Take a slow train; you'll like it

The train left Winnipeg 90 minutes late. Staff members glibly called the tiny single-berth a "shoebox," though it comes with a lounge chair, pull-out mattress and toilet.

For the first five hours, I watched cars zipping by at far-quicker speeds across the flat Manitoba prairie. I finally arrived in Chur-chill's tundra, a two-hour flight from Winnipeg, after 48 slow-going hours.

It was easily one of my favorite journeys ever taken.

Everyone should travel by train, at least once. While researching Lonely Planet's Trans-Siberian Railway guidebook and taking closer-to-home rides such as the City of New Orleans from Chicago to the Big Easy, I've found no transport where it's easier to get away from the modern world, relax and mingle with fellow travelers.

Once on a narrow-gauge train outside Bansko, Bulgaria, I met a goat. A farmer had brought a kid on board in a plastic bag, tenderly feeding it water from a bottle and whispering it to sleep.