We just came back from a tour of the US. Went to New York, New Jersey, Washington DC, San Francisco, Las Vegas and LA. Here's some suggestions for those:
New York - Probably the best place we went. It just awes you when you see the size of it. Buildings are huge, streets are huge. It's no where near as crowded as everyone says. And the people are really friendly. A couple of things to keep in mind though:
- No one makes eye contact. This is from about 15 years ago when New York was a rough area. Everyone is friendly now but they're still too scared to make eye contact
- It also stinks. Not all the time, but you'll often be walking along and you'll get a whiff of a sewer or piss on a wall. I like to describe it as a strip club that stinks of piss and is very rough around the edges but the strippers are all Victoria's Secret Angels
- Prepare to walk a lot. It's faster to walk somewhere than driving. And honestly, avoid driving. People drive like I do. They tell you they want to change lanes by veering into you. If you don't speed up or back off then there's a good chance you'll get hit. They're all great drivers but they expect you to drive like they do. Parking also requires waiting hours for a spot then doing a 50 point park to fit into a tight space
- Buy a metro card. The New York subway is one of the best in the world. You can get anywhere you want to go on the train. The trains come every 5-10 minutes and each train station has its own line so when you get to the train station you know exactly where you're going
- The food is some of the best you'll get. Walk into a cheap diner and order a steak and eggs for breakfast, you'll pay about $10 and get a prime cut of steak that would cots about $40 in Australia
- You cannot get good coffee anywhere. This goes for the whole of America but New Yorkers think they are the one town that makes good coffee. They don't. They have 100 cafes and a fair few of them are Australian cafes, but they still can't make a coffee to save their lives
- Central Park is amazing. People told me to avoid it at night but we were there in the early evening and the park was still flooded with families playing baseball and having picnics
- Manhattan gets a little loud and hotels are pretty expensive. If you want to save money and your sanity, there's some really decent hotels in Long Island City which is about 15-20 minutes out of Manhattan on the subway. Best part is that you can take a 10 minute walk up to Astoria and get some amazing food and night life there. We stayed at the Four Points by Sheraton at Long Island City. Bit of a rough looking area, mainly industrial and there's a panel beater on every corner but people around there are really friendly. Here's a photo from the rooftop bar of the hotel
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/09/af/63/b2/vista-sky-lounge.jpg
Las Vegas - Also one of the best places we went. Amazing atmosphere. Even if you don't gamble there's many things to do while you're there. Word of warning, keep an eye out for people wearing Westgate Resort uniforms. They try to scam you into attending their time-share crap. We actually stayed at the Westgate and it was great but we knew what we were getting into. Read all the reviews before hand so we knew what to look our for. They have an information desk there which is actually a time-share sales desk. They also have people standing around waiting for you to walk passed. They'll ask you if you want to attend their tour, or watch their presentation, or they'll just say "you look tired and the check-in line is long, would you like to take a seat over here?". Or my favourite, "You haven't received your free gift yet?". Apparently when you attend the meeting they abuse you and try to sell you time-shares. Each time they approached me I just told them to piss off. They left me alone after that. While walking around Vegas we saw a few of them around Vegas in general, trying to sucker people in
- Also, there's a lot of alcoholism encouraged. I didn't drink much while I was there as I was too busy running around but it's encouraged. Going to have breakfast first thing in the morning and being asked if you'd like beer or champagne with your breakfast just made me laugh. There's a hairdresser near the strip that serves you booze while cutting your hair. It's hilarious
- If you have a car it's worth checking out Death Valley and the Grand Canyon
- There's also free parking pretty much everywhere in Vegas but I wouldn't suggest driving around the strip. The strip traffic is very slow but it's nice to drive it once to see everything. Outside the strip you can usually find free self-parking everywhere or you can get free valet parking ($1-$5 tip required). There's a monorail that provides transport around the strip
Los Angeles - Wasn't much to like about this place. We didn't end up going to any of the theme parks as we had limited time and wanted to check out Hollywood, Downtown LA, the beaches, etc. Should have just gone to theme parks:
- Hollywood is crap. A bunch of stars on a pavement and a bunch of homeless people looking at you funny. Rough people around there too. No one is friendly and lots of junkies around
- Venice Beach, Long Beach and Santa Monica are all nice, but they're nothing compared to Sydney Beaches. There are some interesting characters around though
- Transport around LA sucks. The public transport system is crap. Takes 2 hours to get anywhere. Driving around is the best option but the traffic around LA is worse than Sydney and there's no free parking anywhere. The rare places where you find free parking are the places where you park for 5 minutes and come back to a car without wheels. Shopping centres have parking but they have weird parking validation. Most shopping centres charge about $1-$2 per hour if you get your parking validated. To validate your parking you either need to spend a certain amount at one of their restaurants or spend a certain amount of certain shops. They're very vague about what you need to do to get your parking validated until you're inside. If you don't get your parking validated then they usually charge around $10 for each 5 minutes.
- Honestly, I really have nothing good to say about LA. I was quite surprised how much I didn't like it. When I mentioned this to other people they all said the same thing. No one likes LA. You go there if you're forced to stop over or if you're going to theme parks. Otherwise it's just a crap town
- "
LA - the streets of LA. Forgot all the glamour, I want to see the wrong end of town", If you're in LA then you're already in the wrong side of town
San Francisco - Pass. Some of my friends love it but I just thought it was a boring town. A big bridge, some semi-decent food. There was a sandwich shop near where we stayed that make some of the best sandwiches we've ever had and there's a nice museum in Golden Gate park but other than that, it's just a boring town
New Jersey - Loved it a lot more than I thought I would. Jersey City and Newark are rubbish but Jersey Shore is great. If you're in New York it's pretty easy to head down to Long Branch and check out all the insane Jewish mansions. They're all different and they'll all competing to see who can build the most insane mansion on the beach. Word of warning though. The beaches themselves are pretty average. No waves at all and you have to buy a pass to enter the beach. The area is great though. Do a nice long drive down Jersey Shore and you see some amazing sights
Washington DC - If you like Museums and monuments then it's good but other than that it's pretty crap. No parking anywhere but a decent subway system if you're staying out of the main town. Hotels in the main town usually charge you a fair amount to park. Full of pretentious organic eating white people too. It's not a good culture to see. It's a mix of overly rich white people wearing shirts saying "Black lives matter" and a mix of homeless black people begging for a cent. The white people wouldn't give them a cent. Happy to wear a shirt but won't actually help them. After seeing a great mixed culture community in New York, it's just sad to see this culture in DC
