Things to do in USA
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FEATURED
Grand Canyon and Rocky Mountain Trails
15 days (Jackson, Wyoming)
Yellowstone, the Rocky Mountains and trek into the Grand Canyon.
Not LP reviewed
from USD$3,190 - All things to do
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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…
reviewed
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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.
reviewed
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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, 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.
reviewed
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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 Park in Bro…
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 Sazer…
reviewed
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Outdoors Geek
This mom-and-pop gear outfitter is a lot friendlier to deal with than fighting through the mobs at REI. It works like this: you call and talk to Will, who puts together a package of top gear for hiking and camping and either ships it to you or arranges a time for you to pick it up at his Aurora distribution center.
This personalized service, along with high quality goods, is the reason we love the Outdoors Geek. Also, the website is perfect for novice campers as well, with tips that will help dispel the anxiety of getting out into nature for the first time.
reviewed
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Art Institute of Chicago
The second-largest art museum in the country, the Art Institute of Chicago has the kind of celebrity-heavy collection that routinely draws gasps from patrons. Grant Wood’s stern American Gothic ? Check. Edward Hopper’s lonely Nighthawks ? Yep. Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte ? Here. The museum’s collection of impressionist and postimpressionist paintings is second only to those in France, and the number of surrealist works – especially boxes by Joseph Cornell – is tremendous.
reviewed
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New York Public Library
This main research building of NYC’s public library system was, until recently, called the Humanities & Social Sciences Library; that all changed when billionaire businessman and library trustee Stephen A Schwarzman donated $100 million to the NYPL’s expansion, and the powers-that-be renamed it the Stephen A Schwarzman Building. Bought or not, though, it remains one of several specialist research libraries in the NYPL system, as well as one of the best free attractions in the city – a monument to learning, housed in a grand, Beaux Arts building that reflects its big-money industrialist roots. When it was dedicated in 1911, New York’s flagship library ranked as the largest…
reviewed
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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).
reviewed
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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.
reviewed
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Powell's City of Books
The largest independent bookstore in the US, this place is dangerously addictive. Bank on your quick one-hour 'browse' turning into three. Fantastic travel section.
reviewed
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Statue of Liberty
One of the most recognizable icons in the world, the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of kinship and freedom formed out of 31 tons of copper and standing 93m from ground to torch-tip. A joint effort between America and France to commemorate the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, it was created by commissioned sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi. The artist spent most of 20 years turning his dream – to create the monument and mount it in the New York Harbor – into reality. Along the way it was hindered by serious financial problems, but was helped in part by the fund-raising efforts of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, as well as poet Emma Lazarus, who in 1883 …
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 - you might be able to capture some measure of noir-ish cool as the drunks stumble past in the Edward Hopper-esque wee hours.
reviewed
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Union Square
Louis Vuitton is more top-of-mind than the Emancipation Proclamation, but this plaza, bordered by brand-name retailers, 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 prison exercise yard. Redeeming features include Emporio Rulli Caffè, the half-price theater-ticket booth and stellar people-watching.
reviewed
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Veselka
Here lies the epitome of what’s beautiful in New York’s dining scene – mind-blowing variety, which can cover several continents as well as the whole gamut of budgets in just a single city block. The East Village's roots lie with Ukrainian traditions, and you can still find some low-key pierogi (dumpling) palaces hanging on, like the classic and uberpopular Veselka.
reviewed
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Excalibur
Arthurian legends notwithstanding, this medieval caricature, complete with crayon-colored towers and a faux drawbridge, epitomizes gaudy Vegas. Excalibur could have resembled an elegant English castle, but its designers decided to go the kitschy route instead, which is just fine with the cheapskate frat boys and families with rambunctious young kids who stay here.
reviewed
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Afterwords Café & Kramerbooks
Generations of DC intelligentsia swear by this combination awesome bookstore and awesome squared brunch spot. Food is simple but very pleasing stuff, stick to your bones but pleasingly innovative – pecan-crusted catfish with hollandaise, anyone? Browsing the stacks before stuffing our guts is a favorite way to spend Washington weekends.
reviewed
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Alcatraz
Alcatraz: for almost 150 years, the name has given the innocent chills and the guilty cold sweats. Over the years it’s been the nation’s first military prison, a forbidding maximum-security penitentiary and disputed territory between Native American activists and the FBI. No wonder that first step you take off the ferry and onto ‘the Rock’ seems to cue ominous music: dunh-dunh-dunnnnh! It all started innocently enough back in 1775, when Spanish lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala sailed the San Carlos past the 12-acre island he called Isla de Alcatraces (Isle of the Pelicans). In 1859 a new post on Alcatraz became the first US West Coast fort, and soon proved handy as…
reviewed
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Brooklyn Bridge
A New York icon, the Brooklyn Bridge was the world’s first steel suspension bridge. When it opened in 1883, the 1596ft span between its two support towers was the longest in history. Although its construction was fraught with disaster, the bridge became a magnificent example of urban design, inspiring poets, writers and painters. Today, the Brooklyn Bridge continues to dazzle – many regard it as the most beautiful bridge in the world.
The Prussian-born engineer John Roebling, who was knocked off a pier in Fulton Landing in June 1869, designed the bridge, which spans the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn; he died of tetanus poisoning before construction of the brid…
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 sketc…
reviewed
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Pike Place Market
The fishy-smelling, tourist-thronged heart of downtown Seattle is Pike Place Market. It's good theater, though claustrophobically crowded. The Main and North Arcades are the most popular areas, with bellowing fishmongers, arts and crafts, and precarious stacks of gemlike fruits and vegetables.
Tiny shops of all descriptions fill the lower levels of the market. It is open all week, though individual shop/stall hours do vary. Try a weekday morning if you don't like crowds.
reviewed
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Lower East Side Tenement Museum
This museum puts the neighborhood’s heartbreaking but inspiring heritage on full display in three recreations of turn-of-the-20th-century tenements, including the late-19th-century home and garment shop of the Levine family from Poland, and two immigrant dwellings from the Great Depressions of 1873 and 1929. The visitor center shows a video detailing the difficult life endured by the people who once lived in the surrounding buildings, which more often than not had no running water or electricity. Museum visits are available only as part of scheduled tours (the price of which is included in the admission), which typically operate daily. But call ahead or check the website …
reviewed
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Bryant Park
Nestled behind the grand New York Public Library building is this lovely square of green – once a patch of squalor, referred to as ‘Needle Park’ throughout the ’80s – where local Midtown workers gather for lunchtime picnics on warm afternoons. Among its offerings are impressive skyscraper views, European-style coffee kiosks, the Brooklyn-constructed, French-inspired Le Carrousel offering rides for $2, and frequent special events, from readings to concerts. This is where the famed Fashion Week tent goes up every winter, and is also the site of the wonderful, outdoor Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, which packs the lawn with post-work crowds lugging cheese-and-wine picnics…
reviewed
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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 t…
reviewed
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Escape from New York Pizza
The Haight’s obligatory mid-bender stop for a hot slice. Pesto with roasted garlic and potato will send you blissfully off to carbo-loaded sleep, but the sundried tomato with goat cheese, artichoke hearts and spinach will recharge you to go another round.
reviewed
