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City in Texas, United States
Photo: Benjamin D. Esham (bdesham), CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Dallas, with a population of more than 1.3 million residents, is the ninth largest city in the United States and the third largest in the state of Texas. It is an impressive melting pot of culture and character. Boasting high-end luxury hotels, innumerable fine dining spots, and one of the busiest airports in the world, Dallas maintains an upscale ethos reflected by an affluent population, world-class museums, and a shimmering modern skyline. Its history was marred by the infamous assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, but there is more historic and contemporary heritage to be discovered in the city. As a center of the oil and cotton industries in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Dallas was a classic American boom town and remains one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. Dallas fell victim to its own success in the automobile era, becoming a prime example of urban sprawl as highways strangled its city center, but has been trying to reinvent itself since the turn of the millennium.
Downtown Dallas is undergoing slow urban renewal and expansion. Traditionally bound by a belt of above-ground expressways, consisting of anonymous high-rise towers, and pocked with parking craters, it is now rediscovering walkability, street-level retail, and public transit. It is in Downtown that you will find most of Dallas' surviving historic architecture and monuments, major cultural institutions, museums and art galleries. It also has several concentrations of restaurants and bars and many upscale hotels for the moneyed traveler to choose from.
North Dallas contains the Park Cities, the most affluent area of the metroplex, as well as several other upscale neighborhoods. The Park Cities, Highland Park and University Park, are mostly residential but also offer world-class shopping opportunities, and University Park is home to Southern Methodist University (SMU), the Meadows Museum at SMU, and the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
South Dallas includes areas south of the I30 Interstate Highway and the southwestern bank of the Trinity River. It includes Fair Park: the annual home of the Texas State Fair, a small collection of year-round museums, and the Cotton Bowl, the venerable football stadium where the University of Texas and University of Oklahoma face off on the gridiron every year during the Fair. The Exposition Park neighborhood across from Fair Park and its DART light rail station is a little hamlet of hipster bars, clubs, and restaurants.
Some area attractions often thought of as Dallas attractions are in the suburbs of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
Spring Creek Barbeque has 15 Texas style restaurants across the North Texas area. The menu is very simple. Beef, ham sausage, turkey, chicken, and ribs are available for entrees (you can have combinations also). Side items available are corn, beans, potato salad, cole slaw, and baked potatoes. In addition, fresh homemade bread rolls are served with each dish and more are delivered to your table during each meal.
Several DFW locations. Lunch specials are very reasonably priced. Service across all of the family owned and operated locations is blindingly fast no matter the location. The chips and salsa are arguably some of the freshest and best in the Metroplex. A unique signature menu item is the "Queso Flameado" where the server melts cheese by fire tableside and then wraps the gooey cheesey goodness in several freshly made tortillas.
Used bookstore chain headquartered in Dallas, offering secondhand books, music and video, with offerings varying by location. The flagship store is in East Dallas, with one other Dallas store and nine more in the Metroplex area.
By train
Two Amtrak routes serve Dallas/Fort Worth:
By car
To get to Dallas from Oklahoma, take I-35 then I-35E at the fork, or US 75 south. From Houston, take I-45. From Austin, take I-35, then I-35E at the fork. To get here from Louisiana, take I-20 west.
By bus
Public transportation
Dallas Area Rapid Transit, or DART, runs an extensive light rail network and dozens of bus routes.
Choose an airport to see hotels, stations, taxi ranks and car rental desks around it.
Dallas · International · DAL
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