DFW is, geographically, closer to a small country than an airport — five terminals spread across enough land that the shuttle ride between them takes longer than some domestic flights. I’d forgotten quite how sprawling it was until the transfer confirmation named a specific terminal and pickup point, which turned out to matter considerably more here than anywhere else so far.
The driver was waiting exactly where the confirmation said, which given the airport’s scale felt like a genuine achievement rather than a baseline expectation. I’d arranged the transfer from Chicago the previous evening, and it had, once again, simply worked.
Into Downtown on the Tollway
The drive into downtown runs mostly on the Dallas North Tollway, flat highway stretching out under a sky that felt considerably bigger than Chicago’s had two days earlier. The driver kept a steady pace through moderate traffic, avoiding a construction closure near the mixmaster interchange that GPS was still routing traffic through, and had me downtown with time to spare before check-in.
The View from Reunion Tower
I went up Reunion Tower in the late afternoon, mostly out of habit — I rarely skip a city’s signature observation deck — and the view earned the trip. Dallas spreads out flat in every direction from up there, skyscrapers clustered downtown before giving way abruptly to the kind of low sprawl that defines most of Texas. The light was doing something particularly good to the glass towers as the sun dropped.
Highland Park, a Different City Entirely
Dinner was in Highland Park, an enclave inside Dallas that operates almost as its own small, wealthy town — mature oak trees, houses set well back from the street, a version of understated money that has more in common with Atlanta’s Buckhead than with the glass towers I’d just been looking down from.
The contrast between that stillness and the tollway I’d been on a few hours earlier was hard to reconcile — Dallas seems to hold both registers at once, sprawling highway city and quiet old-money enclave, within a fifteen-minute drive of each other.
Next Stop: Houston
Two nights suited Dallas well — long enough to get a proper sense of its scale, short enough not to need a car of my own to manage it. The transfer back to DFW the next morning found the right terminal without hesitation, and I checked where the service extends to before booking ahead. Houston is next, further south and, I’m told, even flatter still.