Touring The USA

Boston is East Coast America at its best, and spending a few days there is strongly recommended. It's a place that isn't content to rest on its laurels - the history is visible, but there's a great deal of modern life and energy besides, thanks in part to the presence of Cambridge , the home of Harvard University, just across the river. Several further historic towns are within easy reach - Salem to the north, Concord and Lexington just inland, and Plymouth to the south. Provincetown , a three-hour ferry ride across the bay at the tip of Cape Cod, is great fun to visit, and the rest of the Cape offers historic towns, lovely beaches - and huge crowds. Except for a handful of college towns such as Amherst, inland Massachusetts is much quieter; its settlements are naturally concentrated where the land is fertile, such as along the Connecticut River valley and in the Berkshires to the west.

Las Vegas

The customer is king in Las Vegas. What the visitor wants, the city provides. If you come in search of the cheapest destination in America, you'll enjoy paying rock-bottom rates for accommodation and hunting out the best buffet bargains. If it's style and opulence you're after, by contrast, you can dine in the finest restaurants, shop in the most chic stores, and watch world-class entertainment; it'll cost you, but not as much as it would anywhere else. The same guidelines apply to gambling . The Strip giants cater to those who want sophisticated high-roller heavens, where tuxedoed James Bond lookalikes toss insouciant bankrolls onto the roulette tables. Others prefer their casinos to be sinful and seedy, inhabited by hard-bitten heavy-smoking low-lifes; there is no shortage of that type of joint either, especially downtown.

The Strip
With its erupting volcanoes, pirate battles, Eiffel Tower and Egyptian pyramid, the legendary Strip will blow your mind as well as your wallet.

Bellagio
Las Vegas' most opulent hotel must be seen to be believed, and its sumptuous buffet is the best in town.

Fremont Street
Fremont Street is the lesser-known of the Vegas strips, but it boasts a street-long laser light-and-music show - less hokey than it sounds - plus atmospheric hotel-casinos like Binion's Horseshoe.

Luxor
Don't go to Egypt for Tutankhamen's tomb or the pyramids; there are excellent replicas at the Luxor, a giant black pyramid-shaped hotel with an Egyptian theme. It's cheesy but unmissable.

Honeymoon in Las Vegas
Prove to your significant other that you're serious; plan a surprise wedding at the Graceland Wedding Chapel with your celebrity best man, Elvis himself.

Liberace Museum
A kitsch lover's dream, the Liberace Museum is filled with gaudy artifacts from the great man's career, including his rhinestone-covered capes, gold pianos and over-the-top cars.

Boxing
Catch a prizefight - and perhaps an ear - at the MGM Grand.

Treasure Island Buccaneer Bay Show
Several times a day, crowds gather 'round the galleys at Treasure Island to watch their peglegged, eyepatched crews do battle in the lake outside the hotel. Ahoy, matey!

Flight Reservations & Itineraries

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Louisiana

LOUISIANA is undeniably special. Its history is barely on nodding terms with the view that America was the creation of the Pilgrim Fathers; its way of life is proudly set apart.

Over the last century Louisiana has come to rely more and more heavily upon tourism , centered around New Orleans and Cajun country. And it's not hard to see why: whether canoeing along a moss-tangled bayou, dining in a crumbling Creole cottage on spicy, buttery crawfish, or dancing on a steamy starlit night to the best live music in the world, few visitors fail to fall in love with Louisiana.

Jackson Square, New Orleans
The heart of the French Quarter, where you can enjoy some of the world's best brass band and jazz music for free.

Sunset over the Mississippi, New Orleans
Settle yourself down on a wooden bench and watch the sky turn violet over one of the world's greatest rivers.

Uglesich's
The best seafood in the world dished up in a down-home New Orleans shack.

Napolean House , New Orleans
This gorgeous old bar is just the place to pass a steamy New Orleans night.

Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Festival, Plaisance
The very best in black Cajun music, food, arts and crafts in the heart of Cajun country.

Eunice
Welcoming little Cajun prairie town that's at the heart of the region's enduring music scene.

Swamp tours in Cajun Country
Local guides take you in small boats through ghostly, Spanish moss-shaded bayous.

Mardi Gras, New Orleans

Crazy, colorful, debauched and historic - this is the carnival to end them all.

New Hampshire

New Hampshire's healthy outdoor lifestyle,hiking, climbing, cycling and skiing are enjoyed both by energetic locals and by the many visitors who drive up from Boston and New York. The major destinations are Lake Winnipesaukee , and Conway, Lincoln and Franconia in the mountains further north. Some have grown rather too large and commercial for their own good, but if you steer clear of the paying "attractions," the lakes, islands and snowcapped peaks themselves remain spectacular. To see the bucolic rural scenery more usually associated with New England, take a detour off the main roads up the Merrimack Valley - to Canterbury Shaker Village near Concord, for example.

Montana

MONTANA is Big Sky country. The nickname is no empty cliché: the entire state is blessed with a huge blue roof that both dwarfs the beautiful countryside and complements it perfectly. A magnificent northernmost cap for the US Rockies, this is a region of snowcapped summits, turbulent rivers, spectacular glacial valleys, heavily wooded forests and sparkling blue lakes, at their most dramatic in Glacier National Park . By contrast, the eastern two-thirds is high prairie: sun-parched in summer and wracked by icy blizzards each winter.

Preconceptions of a desolate land populated by cowpokes are soon shattered: each of Montana's small cities has its own proud identity. The university and sawmill community of Missoula , for example, possesses a high-culture feel. Helena still harks back to its prosperous gold mining years, and Bozeman , just to the south, is one of the hippest mountain towns in the US.

Arizona

The tourism industry in ARIZONA has, literally, one colossal advantage - the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. It's the single most awe-inspiring spectacle in a land of unforgettable geology, and one of the few places in the world that you absolutely have to see at least once in your life. However, the Grand Canyon is by no means the most interesting or memorable destination in the state. Indeed, in comparison to its inhuman scale, other parts of Arizona have a more abiding emotional impact, precisely because of the sheer drama of human involvement in this forbidding but deeply resonant desert landscape. Over a third of the state still belongs to the Native Americans who have lived here for centuries, and who outside the cities form the majority of the population. In the so-called Indian Country of northeastern Arizona, the reservation lands of the Navajo Nation hold the stupendous Canyon de Chelly and dozens of other marvellously sited Ancestral Puebloan ruins , as well as the stark rocks of Monument Valley . The Navajo surround the homeland of one of the most stoutly traditional of all Native American peoples, the Hopi , who live in remote mesa-top villages . The third main tribal group are the Apache , in the harshly beautiful southeastern mountains

Colorado

For the modern visitor, the obvious first port of call is Denver , at the eastern edge of the Rockies and the biggest city for six hundred miles. Outside Denver, the northern half of the state holds the most popular destinations, starting with the dynamic college town of Boulder and the spectacular Rocky Mountain National Park . The majority of the resorts that have made Colorado the continent's foremost skiing destination snuggle into the mountains to the west of Denver: Summit County attracts the most visitors, Vail is considered best for terrain, and Aspen boasts the glitziest après-ski scene. The far west of the state stretches onto the red-rock deserts of the Colorado Plateau. Pikes Peak towers over the enjoyable city of Colorado Springs , but the rest of the state's southeast quarter is mostly agricultural plains. To the southwest untouched old mining towns like Crested Butte and Durango stand in the mountains, while Mesa Verde National Park preserves perhaps the most impressive of all the cliff cities left by the ancient Ancestral Puebloan civilization.
Colorado is also one of the best destinations in the world for cyclists , hosting numerous on- and off-road championships.

Hawaii

The islands of HAWAII , with their volcanoes , palm-fringed beaches , verdant valleys , glorious rainbows and awesome cliffs , hold some of the most spectacularly beautiful scenery on earth. However, despite their isolation, two thousand miles out in the Pacific, they belong very definitely to the United States. If you expect your South Seas idyll to be completely unspoiled, forget it; the fantasy of a dream holiday in Paradise remains firmly rooted in the creature comforts of home. With seven million tourists per year, including honeymooners from all over the world, frequent fliers cashing in their mileage, and almost two million Japanese, the islands can seem like a gigantic theme park.

Waikiki Beach, Oahu
Learn to surf, or just sip a cocktail on the world's most famous beach.

Pearl Harbor, Oahu
Relive December 7, 1941 - the "day that will live in infamy" - by visiting the sunken USS Arizona.

Kilauea Eruption, Big Island
The Big Island gets bigger day by day, thanks to the spectacular eruption of its youngest volcano, Kilauea.

Lahaina, Maui
This former whaling port ranks among the most characterful historic towns in Hawaii.

Downhill biking, Maui
Freewheel forty miles down the slopes of Maui's mighty Haleakala volcano.

Lumahai Beach, Kauai
This superb, if dangerous, beach has featured in countless movies.

Kalalau Trail, Kauai
The magnificent Na Pali coastline of Kauai can be admired from one of the world's greatest hiking trails.

Honolulu, just under six hours by plane from the US west coast, is one of the world's busiest centers for air traffic; return fares from LA, San Francisco and Seattle start at around $350. There are also direct flights from the mainland to Maui, the Big Island and Kauai. Many flights to the US from Australia - such as those on Continental - include free stopovers in Hawaii. European travelers should buy all-inclusive tickets from Europe.

Alaska

No other region in North America possesses the mythical aura of ALASKA ; even the name - a derivation of Alayeska , an Athabascan word meaning "great land of the west" - fires the imagination. Few who see this land of gargantuan ice fields, sweeping tundra, glacially excavated valleys, lush rainforests, deep fjords and occasionally smoking volcanoes leave unimpressed. Wildlife may be under threat elsewhere, but here it is abundant, with Kodiak bears standing twelve feet tall, moose stopping traffic in downtown Anchorage, wolves prowling through national parks, bald eagles circling over the trees, and rivers solid with fifty-plus-pound salmon.

Alaska's sheer size is hard to comprehend: more than twice the size of Texas, it contains America's northernmost, westernmost and, because the Aleutian Islands stretch across the 180th meridian, its easternmost point. If superimposed onto the Lower 48 (the rest of the continental United States) it would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and its coastline is longer than the rest of the US combined. All but three of the nation's twenty highest peaks are found within its boundaries and one glacier alone is twice the size of Wales.

A mere 600,000 people live in this huge state - over forty percent of them in Anchorage - of whom only one-fifth were born here: as a rule of thumb, the more winters you have endured, the more Alaskan you are. Often referred to as the " Last Frontier ," Alaska in many ways mirrors the American West of the nineteenth century: an endless, undeveloped space in which to stake one's claim and set up a life without interference. Or at least that's how Alaskans would like it to be. Throughout this century tens of thousands have been lured by the promise of wealth, first by gold and then by fishing, logging and, most recently, oil. However, Alaska's 86,000 Native peoples , who don't have the option of returning to the Lower 48 if things don't work out, have been greatly marginalized, though Native corporations set up as a result of pre-oil boom land deals have increasing economic clout.

Traveling around Alaska still demands a spirit of adventure, and to make the most of the state you need to have an enthusiasm for striking out on your own and roughing it a bit. Binoculars are an absolute must, as is bug spray; the mosquito is referred to as the "Alaska state bird" and it takes industrial-strength repellent to keep it away. On top of that there's the climate , though Alaska is far from the popular misconception of being one big icebox. While winter temperatures of -40°F are commonplace in Fairbanks, the most touristed areas - the southeast and the Kenai Peninsula - enjoy a maritime climate (45-65°F in summer) similar to that of the Pacific Northwest, meaning much more rain (in some towns 180-plus inches per year) than snow. Remarkably, the summer temperature in the Interior often reaches 80°F.

Alaska is far more expensive than most other states: apart from two dozen hostels there's little budget accommodation, and eating and drinking will set you back at least twenty percent more than in the Lower 48 (perhaps fifty percent in more remote regions). Still, experiencing Alaska on a low budget is possible, though it requires planning and off-peak travel. From June to August room prices are crazy; May and September, when tariffs are relaxed and the weather only slightly chillier, are just as good times to go, and in April or October you'll have the place to yourself, albeit with a smaller range of places to stay and eat. Ground transportation , despite the long distances, is reasonable, with backpacker shuttles ferrying budget travelers between major centers. Winter , when hotels drop their prices by as much as half, is becoming an increasingly popular time to visit, particularly for the dazzling aurora borealis .

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