The Rough Guide to the USA (Travel Guide eBook)

Description

The Rough Guide to the USA is the ultimate guide to all fifty star-spangled states. Whether you're planning a mammoth cross-country road-trip, an action-packed whizz around the Rockies, or just a lazy time lounging on the West Coast's best beaches, this fully updated guide will assist you every step of the way. Packed with colour maps, itineraries and route suggestions, The Rough Guide to the USA will help you discover the best the United States has to offer, from New York's galleries and Miami's nightlife, to the lobster shacks of Maine and the vineyards of California. With expert reviews of hotels, restaurants, clubs and bars, plus all the information you'll need on city sights and national parks, you'll make the most of your American adventure with The Rough Guide to the USA.

Sujets

• USA
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Apa Publications
• Date de parution: 30 mars 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 8
• EAN13: 9780241308097
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 107 Mo

Extrait

CONTENTS HOW TO USE INTRODUCTION Where to go When to go Author picks Things not to miss Itineraries BASICS Getting there Getting around Accommodation Food and drink Festivals The outdoors Sports Travel essentials THE GUIDE New York City The Mid-Atlantic New England The Great Lakes The Capital Region The South Florida Louisiana Texas The Great Plains The Rockies The Southwest California The Pacific Northwest Alaska Hawaii CONTEXTS History Books Film MAPS AND SMALL PRINT Introduction Introduction Cover Table of Contents
HOW TO USE THIS ROUGH GUIDE EBOOK
This Rough Guide is one of a new generation of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide ebooks that guarantees you make the most of your trip. An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it also makes a great travel companion when you re on the road.
From the table of contents , you can click straight to the main sections of the ebook. Start with the Introduction , which gives you a flavour of the USA, with details of what to see, what not to miss, itineraries and more - everything you need to get started. This is followed by Basics , with pre-departure tips and practical information, such as transport details and accommodation tips. The guide chapters offer comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the whole of the United States, including area highlights and full-colour maps featuring all the sights and listings. Finally, Contexts fills you in on history, books and film.
Detailed area maps feature in the guide chapters and are also listed in the dedicated map section , accessible from the table of contents. Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale versions, or select different scales. There are also thumbnails below more detailed maps - in these cases, you can opt to zoom left/top or zoom right/bottom or view the full map. The screen-lock function on your device is recommended when viewing enlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest software updates, too.
Throughout the guide, we ve flagged up our favourite places - a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric caf , a special restaurant - with the author pick icon . You can select your own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarking the sights, venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickest possible access to everything you ll need for your time away.
INTRODUCTION TO THE USA
Global superpower and economic colossus, the USA has long held a massive grip on the world’s imagination, from the Jazz Age and Disney, to Kanye and Star Wars . Today, Facebook and Google are as familiar as the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State, the Golden Gate Bridge and the White House, and American brands and images from Apple computers and Levi’s to Coca-Cola and hot dogs are recognizable worldwide. Yet first-time visitors should expect some surprises. Though its cities draw the most tourists – New York, New Orleans, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco are all incredible destinations in their own right – America is above all a land of stunningly diverse and achingly beautiful landscapes. In one nation you have the mighty Rockies and spectacular Cascades, the vast, mythic desert landscapes of the Southwest, the endless, rolling plains of Texas and Kansas, the tropical beaches and Everglades of Florida, the giant redwoods of California and the sleepy, pristine villages of New England. You can soak up the mesmerizing vistas in Crater Lake, Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks, stand in awe at the Grand Canyon, hike the Black Hills, cruise the Great Lakes, paddle in the Mississippi, surf the gnarly breaks of Oahu and get lost in the vast wilderness of Alaska. Or you could easily plan a trip that focuses on the out-of-the-way hamlets, remote prairies, eerie ghost towns and forgotten byways that are every bit as “American” as its showpiece icons and monuments.

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The sheer size of the country prevents any sort of overarching statement about the typical American experience, just as the diversity of its people undercuts any notion of the typical American. Icons as diverse as Muhammad Ali, Louis Armstrong, Sitting Bull, Michael Jordan, Madonna, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley, Oprah Winfrey and Walt Disney continue to inspire and entertain the world, and everyone has heard of the blues, country, jazz, rock ’n’ roll and hip-hop – all American musical innovations. There are Irish Americans, Italian Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans and Latinos, Texan cowboys and Bronx hustlers, Seattle hipsters and Alabama pastors, New England fishermen, Las Vegas showgirls and Hawaiian surfers. Though it often sounds clichéd to foreigners, the only thing that holds this bizarre federation together is the oft-maligned “ American Dream ”. While the USA is one of the world’s oldest still-functioning democracies and the roots of its European presence go back to the 1500s, the palpable sense of newness here creates an odd sort of optimism, wherein anything seems possible and fortune can strike at any moment.
  Indeed, aspects of American culture can be difficult for many visitors to understand, despite the apparent familiarity: the national obsession with guns; the widely held belief that “government” is bad; the real, genuine pride in the American Revolution and the US Constitution, two hundred years on; the equally genuine belief that the USA is the “greatest country on earth”; the wild grandstanding of its politicians (especially at election time); and the bewildering contradiction of its great liberal and open-minded traditions with laissez-faire capitalism and extreme cultural and religious conservatism. That’s America: diverse, challenging, beguiling, maddening at times, but always entertaining and always changing. And while there is no such thing as a typical American person or landscape, there can be few places where strangers can feel so confident of a warm reception.

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NYC

Where to go
The most rewarding American expeditions are often those that take in more than one region. You do not, however, have to cross the entire continent from shore to shore in order to appreciate its amazing diversity; it would take a long time to see the whole country, and the more time you spend simply travelling, the less time you’ll have to savour the small-town pleasures and backroad oddities that may well provide your strongest memories. Unless you’re travelling to and within a centralized location such as New York City, you’ll need a car – that mandatory component of life in the USA.
  The obvious place to start for most people is New York City – international colossus of culture and finance, with a colourful history and numerous skyscrapers to prove its status as the essential American metropolis. While you could easily spend weeks exploring the place, just a little more effort will take you into the deeper reaches of the Mid-Atlantic region to the north and west. Here, whether in upstate New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania, major cities such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh border a landscape of unexpected charm and beauty, from the bucolic hamlets of Amish country and the wilderness of the Adirondack Mountains to iconic sights such as Niagara Falls and holiday favourites like the Catskills. Next door, New England has a similarly varied appeal; most visitors know it for the colonial and history-rich city of Boston, but there’s much to be said for its rural byways, leading to centuries-old villages in Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, bayside Provincetown in Massachusetts and the rugged individualism of the lobster-catching harbours and mountains of Maine – which take up nearly half the region.
  Seven hundred miles west lie the Great Lakes , on the whole the country’s most underappreciated region; dynamic cities including Chicago and a regenerating Detroit, isolated and evocative lakeshores in Michigan and Minnesota, remote national parks such as Isle Royale and Voyageurs, and lively college towns such as Madison, Wisconsin. Bordering Ohio to the east, the Capital Region is the home of Washington DC, capital of the nation and centrepiece for its grandest museums and monuments. Nearby Baltimore is home to America’s freshest crabs and the star-spangled banner, while to the south Virginia contains Jefferson’s Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg, and coal-mining West Virginia has historic Harpers Ferry and the Allegheny Mountains.
  Although Virginia is technically part of the South , for the purest experience you’ll need to venture even further to get the feel of its charismatic churches, barbecue dinners, country music and lively, musically rich cities such as Atlanta, Nashville and Memphis. The “deepest” part of the South lies in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and in these states – with their huge plantations and long history of slavery – you’ll get a very different view of American life than anywhere else in the country. Other Southern states have their own unique cultures: Florida is a mix of old-fashioned Southern manners and backwater swamps leavened with ultra-modern cities including Miami, Latino culture, miles of tempting beaches and the lustrous Keys islands; Louisiana offers more atmospheric swamps and “Cajun” culture, with New Orleans one of the few spots in the USA with a strongly Catholic, yet broadly indulgent culture of drinking, dancing and debauchery; and Texas is the country’s capital for oil-drilling, barbecue-eating and right-wing-politicking, with huge expanses of land, equally big cities suc