North America

United States travel tips

41 guides in United States — when to go, how to get around, which ATMs not to use, and what a fair price looks like.

New YorkUnited StatesThe city that never sleeps

Grand CanyonUnited StatesA mile deep, and no photograph has ever conveyed it

Las VegasUnited StatesA city built to take your money, and extremely good at its job

San FranciscoUnited StatesSeven square miles of hills, fog and other people’s ideas

New OrleansUnited StatesThe least American city in America, and the best-fed

DenaliUnited StatesSix million acres, one road, and a mountain that makes its own weather

YellowstoneUnited StatesThe first national park anywhere, sitting on top of a supervolcano

Los AngelesUnited StatesBeaches, canyons, and a city built for driving

MiamiUnited StatesArt deco, ocean heat, and a Latin American pulse

AnchorageUnited StatesA city with moose in the gardens and the whole of Alaska out the back door

JuneauUnited StatesA state capital with no road out, a glacier at the edge of town, and rain

OahuUnited StatesWaikiki on one coast, the North Shore on the other, and a volcanic ridge in between

ChicagoUnited StatesThe city that invented the skyscraper, on a lake with a horizon

YosemiteUnited StatesA granite valley with waterfalls down both walls, the biggest cliff face in North America at one end, and sequoias older than most countries

ZionUnited StatesA canyon of red sandstone you walk up the middle of, in the river, with a cliff route so exposed it has chains bolted to it

BostonUnited StatesFour hundred years of American history in a city you can cross on foot

SeattleUnited StatesWater on both sides, a volcano on the horizon, and the coffee that changed how the world drinks it

NashvilleUnited StatesLive music in every bar on the street, from ten in the morning

MauiUnited StatesA volcano you drive up for sunrise above the clouds, a coast road of waterfalls and one-lane bridges, and whales in the channel all winter

MoabUnited StatesA desert town between two national parks, with two thousand stone arches on one side, a canyon labyrinth on the other, and the Colorado river through the middle

Hawaiʻi Island (the Big Island)United StatesAn island with eleven of the world’s thirteen climate zones, a volcano that has erupted in most recent years, and the best stargazing on earth from the top of Mauna Kea

KauaʻiUnited StatesThe oldest and greenest Hawaiian island: a canyon Mark Twain called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, a coast with no road along it, and rain that made all of it

Washington, DCUnited StatesA capital of free museums on a two-mile lawn, cherry blossom for two weeks a year, and a metro that actually goes where you want

San DiegoUnited StatesThe most comfortable weather in the United States, a park bigger than Central Park with fifteen museums in it, and the Mexican border twenty minutes south

CharlestonUnited StatesPastel houses on a peninsula between two rivers, the best restaurant town in the American south, and the fort where the civil war started in the harbour

Key WestUnited StatesThe end of the road: 160 kilometres of bridges to an island nearer Havana than Miami, where the sunset is a nightly performance and Hemingway’s cats still have six toes

Bryce CanyonUnited StatesAn amphitheatre of orange rock spires at 2,500 metres, best at sunrise, and some of the darkest skies left in the country after it

SedonaUnited StatesRed sandstone buttes around a small town of galleries and trailheads, with the Grand Canyon two hours north and a vortex on every hill according to some

Joshua TreeUnited StatesWhere two deserts meet: spiked trees out of a children’s book, granite piles climbers come from everywhere for, and a sky with the Milky Way in it

Death ValleyUnited StatesThe hottest and lowest place in North America: salt flats below sea level, dunes, a crater and a painted canyon, all within an hour of each other

Glacier National ParkUnited StatesA road over the top of the Rockies past hanging valleys and waterfalls, with grizzly bears in the bottom of them and glaciers that will be gone within a generation

Grand TetonUnited StatesMountains that rise four thousand metres straight out of a flat valley with no foothills, a river of moose and beavers under them, and Yellowstone an hour north

Big SurUnited StatesNinety miles of cliff road between the mountains and the Pacific, with redwoods in the canyons and nowhere to stay that is not booked months ahead

Napa ValleyUnited StatesThirty miles of vineyards between two ranges, four hundred wineries on them, and a train and a balloon to see it from

Lake TahoeUnited StatesA lake of startling blue at 1,900 metres with mountains all round it, a dozen ski resorts on them, and a casino strip where the state line crosses the shore

AustinUnited StatesLive music every night of the week, barbecue worth queueing three hours for, and a river full of swimmers in a city that hits 38°C

PortlandUnited StatesA city of bookshops, food carts and bridges under a volcano, with the Columbia gorge and the Pacific each an hour away

PhiladelphiaUnited StatesWhere the country was declared, with the art museum steps Rocky ran up, a covered market since 1893, and the best cheesesteak argument in America

SavannahUnited StatesTwenty-two garden squares under live oaks hung with Spanish moss, a river of cargo ships at the end of the street, and open containers allowed on it

Santa FeUnited StatesThe oldest capital in the country, built of adobe at 2,100 metres, with the light that brought the painters and green chile on everything

Palm SpringsUnited StatesMid-century modern houses under a 3,000-metre mountain, a tram to the snow at the top of it, and two hundred days of sun a year