Things to do in North America
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FEATURED
Roadtrip America Eastbound
22 days (San Francisco)
by Intrepid
Traverse the States from San Francisco to New York City, Discover some of America's best national parks, Drive through Death Valley, Roll dice in Las Vegas, Be…Not LP reviewed
from USD$3,180 - All things to do
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Amigos del Sol
Professional, good-value school popular with travelers. Begin classes any weekday – call the director ( [tel] cell phone 951-1968039) between 8am and 9am, 3pm and 4pm, or after 8pm, or send an email the day before you want to start. No minimum duration and no registration charge. Students starting on Monday should arrive at the office at 8:30am.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art
With more than five million visitors per year, the Met is New York’s most popular single-site tourist attraction, with one of the richest coffers in the arts world. The Met is a self-contained cultural city-state, with two million individual objects in its collection and an annual budget of over $120 million. Since completing a multimillion-dollar remodeling project that brought works out of storage, renovated the halls of 19th- and early 20th-century paintings and sculptures, expanded the Ancient Hellenistic and Roman areas and sparklingly remade the American Wing, the place is looking more divine than ever – despite operating in the midst of a financial crisis that has…
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Bike the Big Apple
Biking tours let you cover more ground than walking tours – and give you a healthy dose of exercise to boot. Bike the Big Apple, recommended by NYC & Company (the official tourism authority of New York City and operators of www.nycgo.com), offers five set tours. Its most popular is the six-hour Back to the Old Country – the Ethnic Apple Tour, 12 miles of riding that covers Williamsburg, Roosevelt Island and the east side of Manhattan. Other tours visit the Bronx’ Little Italy, city parks, Brooklyn chocolate shops and Manhattan at night.
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Journeys Beyond the Surface
Offers personalized walking tours on aspects of the DF experience, with a get-off-the-beaten track attitude. Enhanced by expert commentary, tours may cover pre-Hispanic architecture, the muralist movement, or life in low-income neighborhoods, depending on participants’ interests.
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Graceland Wedding Chapel
Offering the original Elvis impersonator wedding (from $199) for over 50 years. If it’s good enough for rock stars, then it’s probably good enough for you, too.
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Central Park
Like the city’s subway system, the vast and majestic Central Park, an 843-acre rectangle of open space in the middle of Manhattan, is a great class leveler – which is exactly what it was envisioned to be. Created in the 1860s and ’70s by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux on the marshy northern fringe of the city, the immense park was designed as a leisure space for all New Yorkers, regardless of color, class or creed. And it’s an oasis from the insanity: the lush lawns, cool forests, flowering gardens, glassy bodies of water and meandering, wooded paths providing the dose of serene nature that New Yorkers crave.
Olmsted and Vaux (who also created Prospect…
reviewed
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Eco Ride
Surrounded by the mountains, jungle and sea, Vallarta offers some truly thrilling mountain biking. This outfit offers guided one-day cycling tours suited for beginners and badasses alike. The most challenging is a 50km expedition from El Tuito (a small town at 1100m) through Chacala and down to the beach in Yelapa. The views are stunning.
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Joe Jack’s Fish Shack
Seafood aficionados flock to this joint for fish and chips, garlic shrimp, whole red snapper and great slabs of mahi mahi. Large groups are graciously accommodated on the pleasant rooftop terrace. The service is jovial and quick, and the music classic rock.
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Español Interactivo
Recommended language classes.
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Art Institute of Chicago
The second-largest art museum in the country, the Art Institute houses treasures and masterpieces from around the globe, including a fabulous selection of both impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. The Modern Wing dazzles with natural light, and hangs Picassos and Mirós on its 3rd floor.
Allow two hours to browse the museum's highlights; art buffs should allocate much longer. Ask at the front desk about free talks and tours once you're inside. Note that the 3rd-floor contemporary sculpture garden is always free. It has great city views and connects to Millennium Park via the mod, pedestrian-only Nichols Bridgeway.
reviewed
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The High Line
For years now, the big buzz in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen has been all about the coming of the High Line, the first section of which finally and officially opened to the public in the summer of 2009. Now you can stroll, sit and picnic 30ft above the city below on what was, since the 1960s, an abandoned stretch of elevated railroad track. The perks thus far are numerous, and include stunning vistas of the Hudson River, public art installations, fat lounge chairs for soaking up some sun, willowy stretches of native-inspired landscaping (including a mini-forest of trees), a cupcake vendor and a thoroughly unique perspective on the neighborhood streets below – especially at…
reviewed
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Venice Boardwalk
Venice Boardwalk is officially known as Ocean Front Walk. It’s a freak show, a human zoo and a wacky carnival, but as far as LA experiences go, it’s a must. This is where to get your hair braided, your karma corrected or your back massaged qi gong–style. Encounters with budding Schwarzeneggers, hoop dreamers, a Speedo-clad snake charmer and a roller-skating Sikh minstrel are pretty much guaranteed, especially on hot summer days. The Sunday-afternoon drum circle draws hundreds of revelers for tribal playing and spontaneous dancing. If the noise doesn’t show you the way there, just follow your nose towards whiffs of ‘wacky tabaccy.’ Alas, the boardwalk vibe gets a bit…
reviewed
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Southern Food & Beverage Museum
Sitting as it does in the commercial crassness of Riverwalk Mall, the Southern Food & Beverage Museum isn’t immediately appealing – from the outside it looks more like a gift shop than anything else. Don’t judge this book by that cover. There’s actually a pretty fascinating, well-executed exhibit behind the fronting shop that includes more information than you’ll probably ever need on the food staples and dishes of the South, and New Orleans and Louisiana in particular. The attached Museum of the American Cocktail isn’t much more than a small gallery hall, but admission is free with the food museum and, hey, how often do you get to see 19th-century ads for…
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Outdoors Geek
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Little Church of the West
Beginners’ wedding packages cost just $199 at this quiet, quaint little wooden chapel built in 1942, in the shadow of the South Strip, as seen in the classic Elvis movie Viva Las Vegas. Spanish- and French-speaking ministers are available (by reservation only).
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In-N-Out Burger
At California’s famous In-N-Out, where the beef patties are never frozen and the potatoes are hand-diced daily, there’s a secret menu. Ask for your burger ‘animal style’ (with mustard, an onion-grilled bun and extra-special sauce).
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Montage
This beloved Creole nightspot under the Morrison Bridge has long, white-clothed community tables, aggressively oddball waiting staff, oyster shooters, streetwine cocktails and legendary macaroni and cheese.
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Powell's City of Books
The USA's largest independent bookstore, with a whole city block of new and used titles. Has other branches around town, including at 3723 and 3747 SE Hawthorne.
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Academia Vinigúlaza
Recommended language classes.
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Statue of Liberty
In a city full of American icons, the Statue of Liberty is perhaps the most famous. Conceived as early as 1865 by French intellectual Edouard Laboulaye as a monument to the republican principals shared by France and the USA, it's still generally recognized as a symbol for at least the ideals of opportunity and freedom to many. French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi traveled to New York in 1871 to select the site, then spent more than 10 years in Paris designing and making the 151ft-tall figure Liberty Enlightening the World. It was then shipped to New York, erected on a small island in the harbor and unveiled in 1886. Structurally, it consists of an iron skeleton…
reviewed
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Café du Monde
Du Monde is overrated, but you're probably gonna go there, so here goes: the coffee is decent and the beignets (square, sugar-coated fritters) are inconsistent. The atmosphere is off-putting: you're a number forced through the wringer, trying to shout over Bob and Fran while they mispronounce 'jambalaya' and a street musician badly mangles John Lennon's 'Imagine.' At least it's open 24 hours.
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Union Square
Louis Vuitton is more top-of-mind than the Emancipation Proclamation, but Union Square – bordered by department stores and mall chains – was named after pro–Union Civil War rallies held here 150 years ago. A misguided renovation paved the place and installed benches narrow enough to keep junkies from nodding off, turning this once-lovely park into a fancy prison exercise yard. Redeeming features include Emporio Rulli, the half-price theater-ticket booth and the stellar people-watching.
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Stash Café
Hearty Polish cuisine is served up with good humor in a dining room with seats made of church pews and daringly low red lights illuminating the tables. Staff range from warm and gregarious to completely stand-offish, but the food is consistent, with quality fare like pierogy (dumplings stuffed with meat or cheese, with sour cream) and potato pancakes with apple sauce. An enthusiastic pianist hammers away from time to time.
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Veselka
A bustling tribute to the area’s Ukrainian past, Veselka dishes out borscht and stuffed cabbage amid the usual suspects of greasy comfort food. The cluttered spread of tables is available to loungers and carbo-loaders all night long, though it's a favorite any time of day.
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Excalibur
Faux drawbridges and Arthurian legends aside, the medieval caricature castle known as Excalibur epitomizes gaudy Vegas. Down on the Fantasy Faire Midway are buried ye- olde carnival games, with joystick joys and motion-simulator ridefilms hiding in the Wizard's Arcade. The dinner show, Tournament of Kings, is more of a demolition derby with more hooves than a flashy Vegas production.
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