Dallas

Dallas is a long way from the sea. The Gulf coast at Galveston is a drive of four hours or more, so it is never a day out. Swimming close to the city happens in the big reservoirs to the north and west, such as Lewisville Lake, Grapevine Lake and Lake Ray Hubbard. They have sandy park beaches and warm water through the long summer, but the shores are muddy-brown and the beaches are plain. White Rock Lake, the city's own lake, is for paddling and the shoreline trail, not for swimming. For most visitors, cooling off means a hotel pool or one of the water parks in Arlington.

Eating in Dallas is built on Texan staples done seriously. Slow-smoked brisket and ribs are sold by weight at counters with long lunchtime queues. There is Tex-Mex with frozen margaritas, a strong steakhouse tradition, and the chicken-fried steak of old diners. Tacos run from street-corner trucks in Oak Cliff to polished cantinas, and the frozen margarita machine, invented here in 1971, is a local point of pride.

The range gets much wider in the suburbs. Richardson and Garland have dense strips of Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants, Carrollton has a Koreatown, and Irving has good South Asian food. Uptown, the Design District and Bishop Arts hold the chef-led restaurants. Nearly all of this needs a car, and there is little street life around eating. The coffee, wine and market cultures are modest.

Dallas has one place that visitors from everywhere want to see: Dealey Plaza and the former Texas School Book Depository. The Sixth Floor Museum there tells the story of the Kennedy assassination of 1963 at the window the shots came from. Beyond that, the Arts District downtown packs the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Crow Museum of Asian Art into a few walkable blocks. The Perot Museum covers science and natural history.

Fair Park has one of the largest sets of 1930s Art Deco exhibition buildings in the country. Swiss Avenue and the Munger Place area show off early twentieth-century houses. The rest of the centre is glass towers and freeways, with little historic street fabric to wander. Two days covers the main sights.

Going out in Dallas is spread across a handful of districts, each with its own crowd. Deep Ellum, east of downtown, is the scruffiest and most fun: dive bars, tattoo-parlour streets, murals and late crowds. Uptown and McKinney Avenue are polished, with patio bars, cocktail lounges and a well-dressed young professional scene. Lower Greenville mixes neighbourhood bars and rooftop patios, and Bishop Arts in Oak Cliff is quieter and more local.

Last orders fall at 2am under Texas law, so the night has a firm end. Getting between districts usually means a ride-hail. The scene is big and sociable, especially on warm weekend nights, but it is not a reason in itself to travel here.

The country around Dallas is flat blackland prairie and post oak woodland cut by the Trinity River, pleasant but rarely dramatic. Inside the city, White Rock Lake has a loop trail popular with cyclists and rowers. The Katy Trail runs along an old rail line through Uptown, and the Great Trinity Forest is one of the largest urban hardwood forests in the country, with the Audubon Center at its edge. Cedar Ridge Preserve, south-west of the city, has the nearest real hiking, on limestone escarpments.

The big reservoirs are used for sailing, paddleboarding and fishing. Spring brings wildflowers and autumn is mild, but summer days above 35°C push most outdoor activity into early morning.

The best day out is Fort Worth, about forty-five minutes west by car or commuter train. It is a very different city: the Stockyards keep the cattle-town past alive, with a twice-daily longhorn drive and old saloons. Its Cultural District holds the Kimbell Art Museum, in Louis Kahn's celebrated building, the Modern and the Amon Carter.

Grapevine, between the two cities, has a historic main street and Texas wineries' tasting rooms. McKinney and Denton, to the north, have handsome courthouse squares, and Granbury has a lakeside square of nineteenth-century stone buildings. Waco, about an hour and a half south, adds the Dr Pepper Museum and the Baylor campus. Most of this needs a car, and the list thins out after Fort Worth.

Dallas and its neighbours have a lot for children. Arlington, midway to Fort Worth, has Six Flags Over Texas and a large water park side by side. The Dallas Zoo and the Fort Worth Zoo are both large. The Perot Museum of Nature and Science is excellent for school-age children, and the Dallas World Aquarium in the West End has a rainforest walk-through. Klyde Warren Park, built over a freeway downtown, has a children's area and food trucks, and every autumn the State Fair of Texas fills Fair Park with rides and fried food.

American hotels and restaurants are easy with children. The difficulties are distance, since most days involve the car, and summer heat that makes outdoor sightseeing hard from June to September.

Dallas is a city built for the car. Sights, neighbourhoods and suburbs lie miles apart along wide freeways, and most visitors rent a car or rely on ride-hailing. DART runs a long light-rail network that is useful for certain trips: from DFW and Love Field airports, to Fair Park, Deep Ellum and downtown, and out to some suburbs. The TRE commuter train reaches Fort Worth.

Downtown, the Arts District and Uptown are walkable among themselves, helped by the free M-Line vintage streetcar along McKinney Avenue. Beyond that, pavements are patchy, buses are slow and summer heat makes walking unappealing.

Dallas takes shopping seriously, and it suits people who like malls and luxury. Neiman Marcus was founded here in 1907, and the city's taste for high-end retail grew up around it. The brand's Dallas presence centres on NorthPark Center, a large mall with art on display and a broad range of labels. Highland Park Village is a 1930s Spanish-style shopping centre where the European fashion houses gather in an elegant open-air setting. The Galleria adds more.

The local speciality is Western wear: boots, hats and belt buckles, sold everywhere from everyday boot shops to high-end custom makers. Bishop Arts and Lower Greenville have independent boutiques. Street markets and crafts are thin, and almost every shopping trip means driving between centres.

Dallas is mid-priced by the standards of large American cities. Hotel rooms cost noticeably less than in the coastal metropolises, especially near the freeways and in the suburbs. Barbecue, tacos and Tex-Mex give plenty of good, inexpensive meals, and many museums are free or low-cost. Against that, most visitors need a hire car or a steady stream of ride-hails. Sit-down restaurants and bars add tax and tip, and the Uptown and downtown hotels, steakhouses and cocktail bars are expensive.

The Arts District gathers the formal performing arts in a cluster of notable buildings. The Meyerson Symphony Center, designed by I. M. Pei, is home to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The Winspear Opera House hosts the Dallas Opera and touring Broadway shows, and the Wyly Theatre is the base of the Dallas Theater Center. Texas Ballet Theater performs here and at Bass Hall in Fort Worth, which is also home to the Van Cliburn piano competition.

For live music, Deep Ellum has been a blues and jazz district since the 1920s. Its clubs host local rock, hip-hop and touring bands most nights, and country and Texas dancehall music are never far away. The scene is solid and wide, without a single institution that draws travellers.

Dallas has no bathing tradition of its own. Relaxation mostly means the polished spas of the large hotels in Uptown and the suburbs, along with plenty of massage and day-spa chains. The most interesting exception is a large Korean-style bathhouse in the north of the city, with heated rooms, pools and an all-day lounging culture. The city's pace is brisk and car-bound, so unwinding usually means a hotel pool or a slow morning at White Rock Lake rather than anything built around rest.