The Bernina Express in Switzerland.

Train journeys are truly one of the great ways to travel. If you’re not in a hurry to get somewhere, it’s hard to beat the opportunity to just sit back and watch the landscape change and the miles drift by from the comfort of your seat, perhaps as you sip a coffee or read a book. And train travel is about more than just making your way to a new destination – the trip itself can easily serve as a memorable travel experience. National Geographic Traveler recently published lists of their favorite train journeys in Europe and North America, and there are some wonderful selections to consider for your next adventure.

Here are a couple of their North American train journeys:

Northwest Passage. Amtrak Cascades. Eugene, Oregon to Vancouver, British Columbia – This scenery-filled route offers “seascapes, mountain peaks [including Mt. Rainier in the south and Mt. Baker in the north], distant islands, rain forests, farm scenes, clouds, mist, and wildlife,” says Francesca Lyman, an editor and experienced rail rider in Kirkland, Washington. “If you don’t see orcas breaching in Puget Sound, you might see harbor seals or otter. Bring binoculars. Also watch for bald eagles, flying fish, and waterfowl.” Prefer cities? Explore Portland or Seattle.

On the rim of Copper Canyon: Chihuahua Pacific Railway. Los Mochis to Chihuahua, Mexico – “El Chepe,” as the train is known, features two departures—first class, meant for tourists, and economy class, about half the fare but making some 50 local stops. Stick with the former for the most comfort. The trip starts near the Pacific coast in the state of Sinaloa and travels more than 400 miles over 37 major bridges and through 86 tunnels in a climb to 7,874 feet above sea level, where a short stop at Divisadero allows for snapshots of the mammoth Copper Canyon.

And two from their European list:

Tunnels Galore: The Bernina Express. Chur, Switzerland, to Tirano, Italy – This narrow-gauge, vertigo-inducing train takes on seven-percent inclines, a 360-degree spiral, 55 tunnels, and 196 bridges—reaching an apex of 7,391 feet and then descending 5,905 feet before coming to a stop. The word “express” refers to the availability of short-notice seat reservations, rather than the train’s velocity as it courses through the Alps south from Switzerland’s oldest town to a charming Italian town of just under 10,000 people. Part of the route is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Epic Journey: Trans-Siberian Railway. Moscow to Vladivostok, Russia – This fabled route, an icon of Russian culture, crosses eight time zones to connect the Russian capital with a port on the Pacific Ocean. On board, poor mingle with rich, young with old, foreigners with locals. Social barriers disappear as passengers share a unique rail experience—and shots of $3-a-liter vodka. You can book a private car via a tour operator for added comfort; schedule any number of side excursions from trekking and scuba diving to city tours.

There are 20 train journeys in all, 10 each from North Amnerica and Europe. Check out the full stories for the other selections. What would you add to the lists?

Photo credit: Iter1 via Wikimedia Commons.

Jane Goldstein, a Boston corporate attorney, was turning 40 when she decided she needed to scale Kilimanjaro. Climbing for eight days with a cast of characters that included a recent widower, her best friend, and four Texans, Goldstein grew fond of the Kilimanjaro-trekker’s mantra of pole-pole, Swahili for “slowly.” It was, she says, “a wonderful pace of life.” Closing in on the summit, she realized the purpose of her trip: it made her feel like she could do anything.

Goldstein’s tale is hardly unusual—midlife restlessness is so common it seems like a cliché. But psychologists say it’s real: a period of discontent that can produce feelings of boredom, doubt, anger, and unease. Traveling has always been a remedy, but more people are forgoing cars and tattoos these days in favor of real-world exploration.

Other than climbing Kilimanjaro, though, what sort of journeys are we talking about? Here is a sample:

Photographing the Tibetan Plateau, Tibet: Environmentalists say the Tibetan plateau, an elevated landmass that spans Tibet, China, and India, is in imminent danger of melting. Learning-based workshops lead caravan tours throughout some of the more remote regions of the diminishing plateau—home to the highest percentage of Tibetans anywhere in Tibet, and a place where Tibetan culture is at its best preserved—with hands-on instruction on bringing home the sort of photos that’ll undoubtedly top the neighbors’ snaps of the Grand Canyon.

Biking through Umbria, Italy: Pedaling through expansive vineyards, olive groves, and medieval hill towns is visually rewarding in itself, but at the end of a good, long haul, what’s better than a celebratory glass of Orvieto? Group cycling trips through the Italian countryside expose travelers to new friends and make accessible foreign ground not typically covered, while good food and wine minimize the boot-camp feel. The best part? Seeing Italy without concern for calories.

Check out the full story for other ideas, everything from surfing in Fiji to teaching English in Cambodia to spending some time at the Esalen Institute in California.

Each day, I walked across the city from my apartment in the 18th arrondissement to school in the 15th arrondissement. I traversed neighborhoods and crossed boulevards and the river Seine on my way to class. For breakfast, I stopped in cafes along the way and ordered a tartine, a crusty baguette slathered with butter and preserves, and cafe au lait. I passed open-air markets, where I purchased baguettes, fresh fruit and runny cheese for my lunch. I continued on, passing restaurants and bistros, pausing to read menus posted outside their doors, window shopping for dinner just as I would for shoes.

At school, I learned to make sauces, stocks and reductions, how to clean fish and poultry, sharpen and use my knives. I learned the basics of pastry and how to cook an egg. I was instructed on how to cut vegetables, roast salmon, prepare coq au vin. I shared my food from class with the dishwasher, who tirelessly worked in our kitchen, cleaning our pots and pans. I was eager to return home from school without leftovers; I had other plans for dinner. My love affair had started. I had a rendezvous with a French bistro for dinner.

I discovered the neighborhood bistro early on. Accessible, convivial and unfussy, the bistros beckoned to me when I returned home from school each day, tired and hungry with no interest in more cooking. Their entrances were warmly lit and festively decorated. Sounds of conversation, laughter and the wafting aroma of delicious food coaxed me into their cozy environments. I would slip into a seat at a small table in the middle of the bustle, sitting elbow to elbow with my fellow diners. I was alone yet in good company, sharing in the enjoyment of eating.

Travel and food always makes a great combination for both experiences and storytelling. Read more of the rest of the author’s French cooking experiences in the full story, which includes recipes for beef bourguignon, potato gratin, and more.

It’s long been thought of as an activity that can’t be done with a family, especially small children; it was a choice you had to make – travel, or start a family, but not both.

However, there is a rise in the number of families who are making travel a reality, with infants and older, and they’re doing it deliberately as a way to educate, expand, and inform their children in ways that are not possible by staying at home.

Are these parents crazy? Although they’ve been asked this question many times, the reality is that they simply realize the tremendous benefits of personal growth and character development, not to mention adventure and fun, available from family travel.

She includes five tips for using travel as a way of developing character in your children (and even in yourself). Here is one of her suggestions:

Get Uncomfortable

Although difficult for most people to do for themselves, let alone to purposefully inflict on their children, being uncomfortable actually means that you are experiencing growth.

Instead of planning the usual, touristy trip, try something new, and well… a little uncomfortable. Think about visiting someplace you might not have considered before, a location that is a bit out of your comfort zone – South America instead of Europe, Dominica instead of Disneyland.

The first time I ever traveled outside of the United States was when I was in my early twenties. My family had taken a vacation to San Diego, and we spent a day visiting Tijuana, Mexico.

During the initial half hour of our visit, I felt literally sick to my stomach. I hated it, I just wanted to run away. I had no real-life concept of the kinds of conditions that others lived in throughout the world, and when I came face to face to it, I was extremely uneasy.

Yet that trip has stayed with me. It planted a seed that has grown more with each journey, and has given me a huge heart for humanitarian work, and a desire to relieve suffering worldwide.

Check out her entire story for other such tips, including extending the stay, getting grateful, starting them young, and giving back.

Pushkar Camel Fair (India) – Each November before the full moon, thousands of people go to the banks of the Pushkar Lake in the holy city of Pushkar in the state of Rajastan, India to be a part of the amazing Pushkar Camel Fair. During the full moon days, a tented city is created adjacent to Pushkar Lake where people from around the globe cover the sand dunes to enjoy the festivities, trade livestock and handicrafts, participate in camel races and experience music, dance and drama. The colors, music and festivities of the annual Pushkar Camel Fair make for a magical experience that visitors are sure to never forget.

Tsukiji Fish Market (Tokyo, Japan) – The Tsukiji Fish Market is a wholesale market that handles the distribution of fish, fruit, vegetables, meat and flowers for metropolitan Tokyo. The market is the largest fish and seafood wholesale market in the world handling over 3,000 tons of 450 different types of seafood each day. The vibrant atmosphere of buyers and sellers running around, scooters buzzing by and forklifts loading trucks attracts tourists from around the world and has turned the Tsukiji Fish Market into a major tourist attraction.

San Telmo Antiques Fair(Buenos Aires, Argentina) – Known for its bohemian charm and historic appeal, the quaint and funky Buenos Aires barrio of San Telmo is full of energy every day. However, on Sundays, it truly comes to life. Every Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm, the Plaza Dorrego is home to the San Telmo Antiques Fair. To call this an antiques fair, or market, really doesn’t speak to what this event is. As you walk along the cobblestone streets among the antique sales, tango dancers perform and provide entertainment for the crowd and, once night falls, the fair evolves into a milonga (a street side dance party).

Check out the entire story for more unique international markets, including links to longer stories about each one.

Here, he introduces his journey:

The mixed blessing of America is that anyone with a car can go anywhere. The visible expression of our freedom is that we are a country without roadblocks. And a driver’s license is our identity. My dream, from way back—from high school, when I first heard the name Kerouac—was of driving across the United States. The cross-country trip is the supreme example of the journey as the destination.

Travel is mostly about dreams—dreaming of landscapes or cities, imagining yourself in them, murmuring the bewitching place names, and then finding a way to make the dream come true. The dream can also be one that involves hardship, slogging through a forest, paddling down a river, confronting suspicious people, living in a hostile place, testing your adaptability, hoping for some sort of revelation. All my traveling life, 40 years of peregrinating Africa, Asia, South America and Oceania, I have thought constantly of home—and especially of the America I had never seen. “I discovered I did not know my own country,” Steinbeck wrote in Travels with Charley, explaining why he hit the road at age 58.

And, later on, contemplates some of the similarities between the U.S. and some other parts of the world that he has visited:

In my life, I had sought out other parts of the world—Patagonia, Assam, the Yangtze; I had not realized that the dramatic desert I had imagined Patagonia to be was visible on my way from Sedona to Santa Fe, that the rolling hills of West Virginia were reminiscent of Assam and that my sight of the Mississippi recalled other great rivers. I’m glad I saw the rest of the world before I drove across America. I have traveled so often in other countries and am so accustomed to other landscapes, I sometimes felt on my trip that I was seeing America, coast to coast, with the eyes of a foreigner, feeling overwhelmed, humbled and grateful.

The whole article may be long for the web, but it’s a good magazine piece and an interesting look at America from a celebrated travel writer.

Seek First to Adapt, Then to Complain (a.k.a., Adaptability) – Living outside your comfort zone becomes the norm on the road. New environments provide different challenges; what worked in the last country may not work in the next. All that stuff you became accustomed to just last week? Forget about it. Independent travel forces you to continually size up each situation and adapt accordingly. Your resulting experience depends on it. Sometimes your life may, too.

We’re reminded of: When we (two American non-Muslims) were presented with a steaming bowl of goat bits at a feast to break the Ramadan fast in Kyrgyzstan, we joined in by reluctantly chewing on a jaw bone.

Plan With Multiple Outcomes in Mind (a.k.a, Planning) – Determine which variables are most important to you (e.g., comfort, cost, risk, time), do your planning, and optimize accordingly. In doing so, you create not only Plans A and B, but also Plans C and D, too. In the end, circumstances force you to a hastily crafted Plan E, which you later realize may have been the best plan all along.

We’re reminded of: When a Chinese train station attendant informs us that the train no longer runs to our next destination, we don’t force it. We find another one…and stumble upon a Tibetan opera festival.

You should check out the entire post for all of their lessons, and then I’d recommend wandering around the website to read about their adventures and see some of the many wonderful photographs they’ve taken.

How did you know you didn’t fit in to conventional society?

There is no reason why we should drive on the right side of the road or the left. The idea of getting a job and working at one company until retirement is only about three generations old and it is already dead. The concept of retiring at age 65 was created in 1935 with the Social Security Act in the U.S. Even that has to change because of the increase in average lifespans. Everything around us is just an idea. If you realize that, then it is easier to see that there is no set plan for life and we are free to do whatever we want.

Encouraging words you would pass on to readers: If you could have had someone there when you took the leap of faith, what would you have needed to hear the most?

The only real risk in life is dying or getting sick before you have a chance to do the things you want. When you start getting older and more and more of your friends and family get sick or die and you lose energy and motivation, you really start to understand how short life is. I don’t want to sound like a parent telling his children how tough life was in the past, but it is all true.

We live in a time of great affluence and opportunity. It is easy and cheap to travel around the world, start new businesses and even become famous if we are willing to put in the work and are able to commit our energies to a single focus. The greatest times in my life have been when I didn’t have much money, didn’t have many possessions and was working insane hours to accomplish something. The “good life” is not an easy life. Easy makes us fat and lazy.  Even if you completely fail, there are unlimited opportunities to start again. Our parents never had these opportunities. Our grandparents couldn’t even imagine this level of wealth and choice. There is no excuse for not attempting great things in life. The only barrier is our own fears, which are generally unfounded, and our unwillingness to do the work required.

Check out the entire interview with John. It’s good stuff.

You get to see the world through their eyes – Kids see things differently. They have a whole different angle on things, and it’s not just because they’re shorter and therefore closer to the ground, although that can help sometimes too. Kids see the wonder in a new place, new activities, new animals and new food…As an adult it can be hard to feel the true sense of wonder you probably should at seeing your first real live kangaroo, orangutan, or giant bird-eating spider, and you might miss that giant earth worm or strange looking lizard completely because you’re just too high up. Kids will draw your attention to all that and more…Traveling with kids means you get involved in activities you might have missed out on. Would you have taken that miniature train ride, visited that wildlife rescue center or talked to that snake charmer if your kids hadn’t insisted on it. Maybe not, and often your travel experience is richer for having done these things.

You have the pleasure of seeing your kids grow and learn in a way that just isn’t possible back home – Traveling is an education. An altogether different, more challenging and more pleasurable education than your kids will ever get in school. You’ll get to see your kids learning a few words of a foreign language, how to make and break camp, how to hike through wilderness areas without impacting the natural environment, and how to read a map. You’ll see them gaining a knowledge and understanding of other cultures, and witness the sense of connection they feel as world geography and history starts to make sense to them, based on their own experiences and observations.

You become closer as a family – In a world where many families don’t even have time to eat dinner together on a regular basis, imagine a few weeks, months or even years spent traveling together, eating, sleeping, learning and adventuring together. Imagine building a foundation of shared experience and memories to draw on as your kids grow up and away and start families of their own. Traveling together gives family members one of the few things money can’t buy – the time and opportunity to grow closer as a family. Doesn’t every kid, and parent, deserve that chance?

What do you think, does she make a case for some of the wonders of traveling with children? Check out the entire story to see some of her other reasons.

Retirement Doesn’t Always Reward You with the Time or Ability to Travel – Have you ever really thought about the person you will be when you are 65? What will your health be like, what will your sense of adventure be like, and most importantly, will your health be able to support your sense of adventure?

What activities are you saving for your retirement – bungy jumping in New Zealand, climbing mountains in Nepal, hiking the Great Wall of China, or horseback riding in Mongolia? Will these things really be possible at retirement age? We spend all of our life waiting, waiting, waiting…until we are free from the shackles of work. However what if when we are unshackled, we can’t do it? Consider taking a mini-retirement now, while you know you can trek the Inca Trail.  If people can have a mid-life crisis, then why can’t you have a mid-life retirement?

Cure your Hurry Sickness and Return to Simplicity – Many Americans are plagued by ‘Hurry Sickness’.  The more we speed up, the less we can slow down. Not only do we multi-task at work but we multi-task our leisure time as well – watching TV and surfing the web, or working out on the elliptical and reading a magazine. We are no longer capable of simply doing one thing and being happy about it.

This has also made us a very impatient society – some may even say rude. How many times have you pressed the “door close” on the elevator, even though someone else is trying to get on? And how often do you catch yourself tapping your foot and huffing away while standing in line for something? We always seem to be in a rush to get nowhere fast.

A traveling career break will force you to slow down and learn to be patient again. As you immerse yourself into other cultures you will observe simplicity and patience that Americans have somehow lost. Sure it can be a frustrating experience letting go of how you expect things to get done, but it will open up your eyes to how the rest of the world operates. In the process you will actually have time to take it all in and appreciate a new, simpler way of doing things.

See the entire article for eight more reasons to consider a sabbatical.