Discover America USA Travel Guide

Urban Adventures

Even visitors who holiday in the U.S. to experience the great outdoors and scenic byways, eventually find themselves seeking urban adventures, too. Whether this means eating, shopping, or visiting museums and theme parks, America’s cities satisfy all tastes.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California. (LA Inc./Stephen Berkman)

Getting away from it all? That may be the goal for some travelers, but others can´t wait to jump into the action, whether that means tasing the local delicacy, taking in a concert, rooting for the home team or climbing onto a roller coaster. No matter where you land in the USA, there´s always plenty to do in and around the nation´s big cities.

DINING

Americans like to eat, and as a visitor you’ll want to join in the movable feast spanning the country and lending each region its distinct fl avor. In fact, the new generation of restaurateurs is seizing on local ingredients to create menus that celebrate regional character and tastes.

Seafood’s abundance has long defined the Northeast — lobster was once so plentiful, fisherman used it as bait. Look for Maine lobster, served whole and in bisques and salads, as a specialty throughout the Atlantic states. You’ll want to sample clam chowder in Boston, crab cakes in Baltimore and, in spring, soft-shell crab in Washington, D.C.

Hand-harvested maple syrup and aged cheeses are delicacies of Vermont and New Hampshire. And in Philadelphia, one item tops the list: the incomparable Philly cheesesteak sandwich.

In the Midwest, beef rules the table. Carl Sandburg might have called Chicago “hog butcher to the world,” but you’ll find tender, grain-fed and aged beef as the featured attraction on menus from the Windy City to Kansas City. On the dairy side of the cattle equation, Wisconsin prides itself on its cheeses. It’s the reason fans of the Green Bay Packers football franchise are called “cheese heads.”

Diversity is the name of the game on the West Coast; chefs in California launched America’s culinary regional movement. You’ll feel the proximity of Mexico in the spicy Chicano fare of San Diego and Los Angeles, while Asian influence throughout the state sparked a sushi craze that has swept the nation. You’ll find restaurants from Portland to Seattle specializing in what has become known as “fusion” cuisine based on this marriage of east-meets-west; you’ll also find fabulous salmon in this part of the country.

In the South, home cooking never went out of style, but celebrity chefs like Emeril Lagasse in New Orleans and Paula Deen in Savannah have raised Southern classics to a new level. From Richmond, Virginia to Jackson, Mississippi, you’ll see shrimp and grits, biscuits and fried chicken, collard greens and okra on the menu. Order any of these dishes — or all of them — and you will be delighted.

Barbecue pork, beef and chicken are available at virtually every stop in this region — in Texas, it’s all about the beef — and each state takes pride in its own special variation on either tomato- or vinegar-based sauce.

ARTS & CULTURE

While food imparts the flavor of each region, the lively arts provide the sights and sounds — from the Broadway musicals of New York to the Mardi Gras parades of New Orleans, from the party-time blues of Chicago to the rhythmic salsa of Miami.

Fans of America’s most enduring cultural export — rock music — can explore its history at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, the Motown Historical Museum in Detroit (also known as Hitsville USA) or Seattle’s Experience Music Project, identifiable from miles away because of Frank Gehry’s gravity-defying architecture.

You’ll hear the roots of rock in the Dixieland jazz halls of Bourbon Street in New Orleans and in the blues clubs along Beale Street in Memphis — a stone’s throw from Graceland, home-turned-shrine of “The King,” Elvis Presley. In Nashville, visit the Country Music Hall of Fame before joining an audience for the Grand Ole Opry’s Saturday night live radio broadcast. In Southern border towns from Austin to El Paso, where Mexican culture is influential, blues-based music is the glue that holds the soundtrack together.

Of course, New York City is still cultural capital of America. Rewarding Manhattan moments run the gamut from free Shakespeare in Central Park to concerts in legendary Carnegie Hall. The New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera and New York City Ballet dominate Lincoln Center in mid-town; this multi-theater cultural complex also plays host to distinguished jazz artists, cutting-edge film and world-class theater. Summer travelers should look for the acclaimed Lincoln Center Festival.

In Brooklyn, another of New York’s five boroughs, seek out the Brooklyn Academy of Music for its adventuresome programming and the charming Bargemusic, where top-flight chamber music and jazz concerts combine with spectacular views on a boat docked under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Beyond New York, you’ll find world-class orchestras in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, where you might take in a concert in either historic Hollywood Bowl or the spectacular new Walt Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank Gehry. Opera lovers should not overlook San Francisco, Houston and, in summer, the bold Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. For dance, the American Dance Festival, which once launched the career of Martha Graham, runs all summer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

In Washington, D.C., the collection of museums known as the Smithsonian Institution offers a vacation’s worth of exhibitions, but save time for the National Gallery, too. Serious art aficionados will want to arrange in advance to visit the Barnes Foundation near Philadelphia, one of the greatest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in the world.

SHOPPING

Americans take their shopping seriously. The most spectacular testament to this is the Mall of America, a 4.2-million-square-foot complex outside the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. In addition to 520 stores, this behemoth houses bars, restaurants and an indoor amusement park with roller coasters.

The U.S. also has numerous shopping districts that double as recreation destinations. Consider visiting the glittering shops of Rodeo Drive in the Beverly Hills section of Los Angeles, New York’s Fifth Avenue, Chicago’s
Magnificent Mile and Miami’s Bal Harbour. In some noteworthy instances, shopping has been used to preserve historic sites and give them a second life: Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace, San Francisco’s Ferry Terminal and Washington, D.C.’s Old Post Pavilion are a few examples.

As important as fun to the experience of shopping is value, and the phenomenon of the outlet mall has now spread to all fifty states. Originally conceived in manufacturing regions as a way for producers to sell overstock or discontinued items directly to the public at a discount, the concept has now encompassed goods of all kinds, from kitchenware and bedding to dry goods and designer clothes. Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in Central Valley, New York, one of the nation’s largest outlet centers with more than 200 stores, is less than an hour away from New York City.

SPORTS

Americans often wax poetic when talk turns to baseball. Walt Whitman asserted “it’s our game, the American game.” With roots stretching to 1869, Major League Baseball counts thirty teams throughout North America, from the Atlanta Braves in the Southeast to the Seattle Mariners in the Pacific Northwest.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Mary McGrory put it, “If baseball is what we were, football is what we have become.” Perhaps that’s because the granddaddy of all sports championships, the Super Bowl, is watched around the world. Games played by the Pittsburgh Steelers, Dallas Cowboys and Washington
Redskins, among the National Football League’s thirty-two teams, might figure into your plans.

The National Basketball Association has thirty teams to please visiting hoops fans, from the venerable Boston Celtics, with more championships than any other team (sixteen), to newer franchises like the Charlotte Bobcats, started in 2004. While teams of the National Hockey League are predictably clustered in the Northeast, including the Detroit Red Wings and New York Rangers, the league now has franchises in such unlikely places as Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix and Southern California.

Gaining on traditional league ball sports and attracting ever more spectators is the roar of stock car engines. NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto
Racing) had its roots in the bootlegging culture of the Southeast during the Prohibition Era. Major race tracks stretch from Daytona Beach, Florida to Indianapolis, Indiana, and a NASCAR museum will soon open in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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