If Hamlet had been a tourist today, he may have said, “To fly or not to fly, that is the question. Whether ‘tis better to ride the rails than endure the slings and arrows of outrageous airport security. Ay, there’s the rub...especially when the TSA villains fondle my bare bodkin..”

Of course, there’s no absolute answer. In some areas of the travel world, such as Japan, the super-modern bullet trains travel almost as fast as an airplane flies. And allows passengers to go comfortably from city downtown to downtown without the hassle and expense of driving miles out of the city to a remote airport. And of course, there's the autumn scenery.

Until trains in the U.S. reach such sophistication and speeds, flying is still the fastest and most convenient for cross-country and other long hauls. Of course, that will change. In the future are 3,000-mile-per-hour tube trains, in underground and underwater supersonic systems. They will someday soon offer three-hour train trips from New York to Los Angeles, as well as New York to London.