Phorum travels in America. America travel

About how to travel to the USA on your own, without intermediaries and travel agencies, how to organize an independent trip around the USA, helpful tips organizing a trip to the USA. Rent a car, book a hotel in the USA, useful sites.

First you need to understand that in order to travel to the USA, in addition to desire, two things are needed - a visa to the USA and money, no matter how trite it may sound.

Maybe it's easier to buy a package tour? No, it's not easier. Firstly, it is at least twice as expensive as what you spend yourself. Secondly, you will not see America from the bus window in the company of unfamiliar people, only by yourself and only by car. All other formats are money thrown to the wind.

No organizational problems traveling in the USA will not arise - in the States is beautiful tourism infrastructure, helpful people, including police officers and low cost of fuel. There is a good network of roadside relatively inexpensive motels and just a scattering of attractions, including beautiful cities, amusement parks, luxurious ocean beaches and national natural parks.

Get a US visa

This is the first thing you need to start preparing for a trip to the States. First we get a visa, then we book hotels, rent cars, and so on. A traveler will always be given a visa, they will refuse those who, pretending to be a traveler, want to immigrate. For them, I have -.

When is the best time to travel in the USA?

Weather and climate is an important point for a traveler in the United States, not only your plans, but also your expenses will depend on it. During the peak season it is always hotter and more expensive, respectively. More about the weather and California climate can be read in the article .

How to buy a cheap air ticket to the USA

There is only one rule - buy in advance, do not break into the high season, for example, May-September without unnecessary need. Now a ticket to the USA - to New York or Los Angeles can be bought for 600-700 dollars, with a good set of circumstances, perseverance and luck, even cheaper. You can book an air flight on the airlines website, but I recommend using the aviasales aggregator site and buying tickets there, for example Kyiv-Los Angeles, Moscow-Los Angeles, Kyiv-New York, Moscow-New York

How to book cheap accommodation in the USA

There may be two options. The first is to book all accommodation in advance along the route, or at least book accommodation for the main points of the route. The second is to book accommodation during the trip. In the second case, it will give some feeling of freedom, but it will take more time. In addition, there will not always be affordable options for the price, especially for national parks during the high season. For example, in June-September.

For budget travel in USA there is a well-developed network of inexpensive, under $100, roadside motels, but you need to be prepared that some of them will not meet your expectations of comfort. Can be noisy and not always sterile.

Cheap accommodation or hotels in the USA can be found through the Hotels Combined booking system (Room Guru), is a hotel booking service that compares the prices of dozens of major booking systems, we just have to choose the best offer.

There are a couple of interesting blind hotel booking sites:

www.priceline.com- compares offers from different companies and allows you to name your price, which it offers to airlines, hotels and car rental offices. A kind of trade, often companies agree and you get a good price. True, until the moment of payment, the name of the hotel or rental company is not known. Only the level of the hotel and the approximate location, as well as the type of car, are known.

www.hotline.com- on this site you can find good discounts, but before receiving the money, you again see only the level of the hotel and its approximate location, as well as the type of car.

In addition to hotels, you can stay in private apartments or apartments, for this there is Airbnb service or popular in the States. Apartments are home conditions, including a kitchen, a couple of bedrooms, a veranda or terrace, and other amenities of living in a house or apartment.

How to find cheap accommodation while traveling?

We book for HotelsCombined.com. Why? Because this search engine allows you to find the best options and not pay too much. The search goes through several popular booking systems, we just have to choose the best option.

Websites for booking apartments or houses:

www.vrbo.com
www.flipkey.com

Hotels can also be booked directly on their own websites. It takes several times longer. Often on hotel websites you can find online coupons which are only valid when booking through their own websites. Although in my practice this is rare and we prefer to book through hotel booking sites.

How to book a car for travel in the USA

Without car in the USA anywhere and if there are no rights, then urgently look for a friend or girlfriend with rights and driving skills. You will get a lot more out of traveling than boring train or bus rides. In the same bus vehicle which transports the homeless or package tourists.

Websites of nationwide car rental companies with offices almost everywhere:

www.hertz.com
www.dollar.com
www.enterprise.com
www.nationalcar.com
www.avis.com
www.budget.com
www.alamo.com
www.thrifty.com

If you book directly with these companies, you can also use all sorts of online coupons, which, with a certain knowledge of English, are quite easy to find on various forums.

In addition to large international companies There are many more regional offices whose prices may be more interesting.

If you, like me, have no desire to overpay, but want to get everything at once and at a good price, you should use international car rental sites. I use rentalcars.com - because the simple and clear interface, good price. Yes, there are no discounts and no trade, but I buy what I see at a fair price and do not spend a lot of time.

America. It is worth going here at least once for the spirit of freedom, urban atypicality and, of course, the greatness of the unique nature!

My trip to the States lasted 6 months, I just brought my body to this continent and decided to see what would come of it. There was a great desire to visit a lot of national parks, but I had no idea how to do it with my ridiculous budget. In my head there was only porridge about prohibitions, rules, someone else's freedom and the far-fetched high cost of everything around.

I still come across people who carefully keep the belief that planes are a super-outrageous luxury, and a flight to the USA costs a thousand bucks. Are you guys serious?! Yes, in Russia, I increasingly see tickets for trains that are more expensive than planes. The development of technology and the competition of airlines are ready to give you tickets almost for nothing, take at least the growing number of low-cost airlines.

The cheapest flights to America from everyone's favorite Europe. The average price is $ 130 (there are offers from $ 50), to find these tickets you need, firstly, to plan your trip in advance so that you can buy tickets in advance, and secondly, to scan sites for tickets for some time, until will appear interesting options(note the Vandrouki website, there are a lot of good suggestions and check options).

*Sometimes from Moscow there are tickets for 15,000 rubles round trip, incl. Aeroflot (added from comments). Check for tickets too.

Sometimes there are good prices from Moscow, but most often it’s all the same with a transfer in Europe, and so that there are no various misunderstandings with transit zone(and I hear similar stories more and more often), it’s better to get a Schengen visa just in case. This process is elementary.

How to get a visa to Europe for ordinary, mortal, non-working, autotop workers, I have described:

(Finnish, Schengen expense $ 65 plus from 30 rubles a day),
and (Spanish, easy to get, but you need a certificate from the bank on the availability of funds).

Round-trip flight to the USA from Europe within $400. We flew from Madrid to Las Vegas for $180 with a layover in Oslo.

Housing. Where to sleep in the USA cheap

It is very, very logical that there will be no prices for hotels and hostels, we exclude this. Although I’ll say just in case that we were somehow rented a room in LA for a hundred bucks and cockroaches ran over our toasts! So you just go broke on normal numbers.

We take a tent with us and remember about your profile on the hospitality site. For the period of stay in the city, we find someone to stay, in national parks we sleep in a tent.

You can buy a fitness subscription from $10 (a large network that exists in many cities) and go there to take a shower, I think it's convenient. Sometimes there is no registration (according to couchsurfing there are no people ready to accept us, or they have sudden business), then we sleep in a tent in the city.

In the USA, a lot of homeless people live on the streets, and not all of them are drug addicts, alcoholics or psychos, many are quite adequate and look very good, but they sleep on the street in a tent. Yes, a backpack with foam and a tent is a set of a typical American bum. In Las Vegas, we felt very well all the salt of their life, and in Los Angeles, even homeless social workers gave us cards for food and travel, finding us in the tent in the morning.

Free showers can be found at gas stations for trucks, truckers are given free shower coupons as a bonus for refueling a truck, you just need to tell them about your trip and ask.

Movement in the States

Bicycles!

The first brilliant idea that came into our bright minds was to buy bicycles and slowly, with a breeze and a spirit of freedom, try to understand what is happening in this country in general.

At our service is a Walmart store, we bought bicycles and everything necessary for their repair here. Within three months, the store is ready to return the money for the goods without the need to explain the reason for the return. Very convenient free rental, I recommend.

Prices for bikes are 70-200 dollars. As soon as we stopped liking one of the bikes, we calmly handed it over and bought another, better one.

Minus this undertaking in the scorching desert sun. If your trip is from March to September and you plan to cross the western part of America, be sure to check the weather. When I overheated in the sun, I could only lie under a bush, make lowing noises and sleep, and this slightly slows down the journey.

Pros a lot of this stuff. The main ones are, of course, mobility, independence and secrecy. It is very easy to bypass the payment points at the entrances to the National Parks, just as easily you can spend the night anywhere, hiding behind a bush or a stone, without paying for camping.

Another plus is the indisputable image of travelers, here the attitude towards you is different, many ask about the need for help, they give food, water, but this is only when we leave the city. In the city, we are no different from the homeless, at least in Las Vegas, where we were based for the first time, homeless vagrants often look better than us, and they have expensive brands of backpacks with bicycles ..

In cities, as a rule, there are special paths for cyclists, if they are not there, then you still feel confident, the drivers are quite adequate (the complete opposite of Vietnam, for example). Outside the city, we moved along the autobahns, I don’t know if this is legal, but the police did not stop us.

When we were rewinding our trunks in complete darkness, in the American wilderness, they drove up to us and asked if we needed help. When our camera exploded, we always found someone who would give us his spare, well, that is, they found us themselves. Once, those we met did not have a spare camera and they took us to a store in the nearest city in their pickup truck.

For the night we set up a tent anywhere near the track, or in a secluded place in the park. If you are traveling in the summer season, you need to be attentive to the presence of snakes, scorpions and tarantulas, go into the grass only with a stick and it is better before dark. We personally met with a rattlesnake, which we almost stepped on, it rattled loudly, my indifference about living creatures dissipated in an instant, be careful in general. We also saw tarantulas in their natural habitat more than once.

Bicycles visited 2 national parks (Lake Mead with Hoover Dam and Valley of Fire) and 1 state park (Red Rock), in time - 30 days, in distance - about 700 kilometers (for a very long time we got used to the heat, lay in the shade , waiting for the sunburn to pass, the temperature was stable over 40 Celsius, at night it often did not fall below 25.

Our bike trip ended as spontaneously as it began, I came across an entry on the Internet about looking for people to travel together in the USA in a rented car, and I thought that this was my dream. Having calculated the remaining money, I realized that there was enough for this venture, if I ate just a little bit, in general, back to back, but I could no longer be stopped. We returned our bikes to the store and took the next bus from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, where the Russian team was arriving shortly.

Traveling with a rented car

For one month our home was a Dodge Caravan that we rented for $70 a day, it was unforgettable. We had one baby six months old, different stories with the police, a lot of snow and beauty.

If you are planning a month-long journey, then it will be cheaper to buy a car than to rent. Especially if you are a master felt-tip pen and like to delve into these pieces of iron.

Price from 1000 bucks (60 thousand rubles), You can see the options for example here: sfbay.craigslist.org

The ideal state for buying a car is California, here everyone does not care about your rights and citizenship.

It is better to rent through different aggregators like Kayak.ru. The whole point of renting a car is its insurance, since you are a foreigner it will cost you a fortune. Perfect option -
take the car to big company, like us.

There is a variant of another adventure: on the site autodriveaway.com - the car owner needs to drive a car from one city to another, sometimes across the country, and he is looking for a way to save on the services of drivers. This is the perfect way to see the country cheaply and tastefully! The number of days is of course limited, and you can’t deviate much from the route, but you can always visit something interesting along the way. You only pay for gas, but very often this pays off with a generous tip upon arrival at your destination.

Gasoline is not quite expensive, in some places even very cheap ($2-4 per gallon (3.78 liters), it's like 32 rubles per liter. It is better to pay for gasoline in cash, they always take a commission for the card and the price differs from that indicated on the scoreboard.

The journey took 30 days.

Distance traveled: 7250 miles (11920 kilometers, further than from Moscow to Vladivostok). Covered 9 northwestern states.

Money spent:

$983 for gasoline
$246 for food, that is, 100 rubles a day per person!
$150 to visit parks (price per pass and entrances to state parks)

27 nights spent in a tent, 3 nights in friends' apartments.
Of all the nights spent in the tent, four did not contradict the law and rules.

4 times dealt with the police.

1 time drove into the car in the parking lot.

Visited 9 National Parks:

Joshua Three national park
Yosemite
Rushmore nat. monument
devil's tower
Yellowstone
Mount Rainier
North Cascades
Olympic
Crater Lake

6 State Parks:

Calaveras
Custer
Palouse Falls
cape perpetua
Oregon Dunes
Silver Falls

4 cities:

San Francisco
Salt Lake City
Seattle
Portland

And drove most of the east coast of America on the first route along the Pacific Ocean!

As for the police and rights, the states have a slightly different control system, here you will never meet a semblance of traffic police, no one will be waiting for you behind the bushes to check if you are drunk or under something.

If you do not violate, they do not stop you, and vice versa, if you violate, then the highway patrol calculates you, turns on flashing lights and attaches itself to the back, if you see bright lights chasing you, this means that you need to snuggle up to the side of the road and wait in the car, putting hands on the steering wheel. I know several people who drive perfectly, without breaking, but without a license, and for several years there were no problems with the police.

Feature of budget travel by car is an evening adventure to find places to sleep. If on a bicycle you can turn off the road anywhere and crash camping in nowhere, feeling calm and wonderful there, then by car you need to find a suitable parking place. Here, according to the principle “Everything that is not prohibited is allowed”, we scanned the rest areas for signs prohibiting night parking. If this is not available, then we stayed, Lesya's mother slept in the tent with the child, and the remaining team members left to look for places for two tents. As a rule, there are no secret places in such parking lots, so we just parked on the edge, and this is no longer legal, so we woke up at dawn and pretended that nothing had happened.

Also on the map of the States there are quite a lot of green zones marked “National forest”, in the territory of these forests it is legal to park a car, set up a tent camp and burn fires, the main thing is to do it away from the road.

On the territory of national parks, we found an official campsite, parked a car there, set up a tent after sunset, when the rangers were already leaving, and gathered at dawn, thus saving a fortune.

Aircraft inside the USA

They fly across America in all directions, the minimum cost of tickets is $50, although there are some mystical low-cost airlines, but not everywhere and not always. And why deprive yourself of the pleasure of seeing the American outback from the window of a bus or car. Although, when we realized that we didn’t have time to hitchhike to New York, and the 6 months allotted for us on a visa would soon end, we took a plane from Chicago to New York.

Buses in the USA

Most a budget option moving around the states, not counting hitchhiking, these are buses. The two main services megabus.com and www.greyhound.com staged an auction of unprecedented generosity and sell tickets from $ 1 if you buy in advance. The routes do not cover all of America, but you can go to many places and with amenities (free Internet, sockets, toilets). So, we drove from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and from San Francisco to Los Angeles for $5. But the most beautiful adventure was the bus from Texas to Chicago, 22 hours for $15.

The Americans themselves prefer to fly by airplanes, so there were some blacks in our bus from Texas, reading repch and creative inadequate, but it is fun).

We hitchhiked approximately 6,000 kilometers across six states. During these 54 days, money was spent:

for food $ 270 (143 rubles a day per person),
34$ for public transport in cities,
$10 for laundry
$18 for gas cylinders,
$47 for clothes
$58 for permits in the parks (mostly they did not pay, but sometimes they had to),
$40 for little things.

Hitchhiking is generally legal, but some states still list it as illegal, although the police themselves do not know about it. But to feel confident, you can find information about the legality and difficulty of hitchhiking in a particular state here: hitchwiki.org/en/United_States_of_America

In order to stop the first car, we got out to the outskirts of the city, walked to the freeway check-in and waved our hand, making it clear that we needed a lift.

They stopped more willingly than not, took us far, fed us, worried about us, told us about the beauties nearby.

I really like American hitchhiking because of the diversity of cultures here, everyone from Africans to Colombians consider themselves locals, an amazing mix of nationalities who grew up in American culture. Trucks rarely stopped, mostly wide cars with huge wheels, here they love space in everything.

Police came to our soul only once, when we did not leave before dark, and were gloomy silhouettes in the darkness of the night, and this is already suspicious. It was explained to us that it was not safe and illegal to stand on the roads to the highway, even if it was the best place for our business. We were sent to a deserted gas station and wished good luck.

In the light of day, under these same circumstances, police cars just drive by, because they see that we seem to be adequate.

Appearance. In America it is very important to look neat, your appearance is 90% success. This is probably why lonely hip-looking guys with a big beard are not very lucky here. But put a girl next to you - there is already more trust.

Sometimes the most narrow-minded policemen can tell you about the impossibility and illegality of hitchhiking, in this case I would take a bus to another exit from the city and stop the car there.

The most unfavorable places for hitchhiking - nearby big cities, or, even worse, in urban areas. The deserted expanses of "nowhere" are the most favorable places for hitchhiking, where you look quite unambiguously like people who want to go somewhere. Although once we were not badly stuck in the north of Utah, where there are not so many cars, but on our arrival there was one at a time in fifteen minutes. Stayed for two hours, which is rare.

On hitches we drove through 6 states, winding between national parks. In those parks where no free buses were found, we also hitchhiked, learned that each park has its own laws on this matter, and even if hitchhiking is legal in the state, it may be prohibited in the park. So, in the Carlsbad Caves park, several rangers stopped us and said that we were doing something illegal, they told us to walk and not try to stop the car anymore, but after walking 15 kilometers, we still caught the car before the exit.

Hypermarket parking lots. If you are stuck in the city, and the police ruthlessly drive you from the entrance to the highway, or it is very far from it, then it is most logical to find a large hypermarket, such as Walmart, and slow down the cars at the exit from the parking lot, asking them to take you to the entrance to the highway, they ate , relaxed and not difficult for them.

Gas stations. As for gas stations within the city, it seemed to me that this was not the best idea. Truckers do not understand where they are going, and when asked if they are going north, with fear in their eyes they automatically name the opposite side of the world.

But with this type of travel, I can't guarantee you will have the same experience, just know that hitchhiking exists and I personally had an incredible experience during two months of such an adventure!

Food

For food, we spent no more than $ 5 for two a day (150 rubles each), with different types movement, this figure varied slightly. For a large company with a rented car, where you can store huge packages of rice, pasta, beans - we spent 100 rubles a day per person, although we ate heartily!

The secret to economy and variety is the gas cylinder, burner and large packages. When traveling by car, there was always oatmeal with bananas for breakfast, salad and pasta for lunch, diversity and sweets for dinner. Sure, we looked a little weird, sprawled out on the sidewalk, or in the parking lot with all our plates. Once seeing us with all the staff in the library parking lot, the librarian called the sheriff, saying that we were cooking amphetamine here early in the morning! But in general, apart from the awareness of their absurdity, there were no problems.

Fast food. In general, America is a country of fast food, in any parking lot and McDonald's and Fatburger, and Kingburger, this stuff is enough. Yes, you can really find dollar burgers and free unlimited soda there (just find a glass in the area and refil indefinitely). Be sure to install the McDonald's USA app, thanks to it I had free ice cream and food every day, without having to buy anything, Americans love coupons.

The shops. It's good to save money with stores where all goods are for the dollar "99 cents Only", "Dollar Tree", there is absolutely everything that we ate every day. The Walmart or SafeWay chain always has a counter with sales of sweets, and the prices in them are generally pleasant.

The longer you stay in America, the more budgetary you start to live. This country is beautiful with its price contrasts. You can buy two kilos of bananas for $ 1, and in the store opposite for $ 7, and so on everywhere. To buy products for the house, you need to go around at least 4 stores and then it will be as budget-friendly as possible. But this is only if you stay somewhere for a long time.

If you just need to shop and not sweat, then let it be walmart. Also here, the prices are indicated without a tax, that is, you will go to the checkout and see other prices from those on the price tags, this is always a surprise. Unless the first-use products (bread, milk, eggs ..) are not taxed, and in each state the amount of the tax is different.

The key to your savings is a burner and a pot, you will still "love" this romance of cooking pasta for dinner ... Gas cylinders are sold in the same Walmart for $ 8 large, $ 4 small and $ 2 "dichlorvos". If you have multi-fuel, then this is the cheapest option, but it often clogs even with high-grade gasoline.

Free food. In big cities, food is often distributed to the homeless and the needy, you can ask local vagrants where these places are. In the city of Fresno, we somehow accidentally came across a park where all the tramps had a loaf and a pie, moving towards a concentration of people, we came to a car full of muffins, cheese baguettes, pies and loaves. Not expired at all, they just give it to everyone who wants it.

It's no secret that in today's world, where supply exceeds demand, a lot of good products are thrown into the trash every day. Well, for example, every morning a certain amount of pastries are baked in this store, and everything that is not sold goes to the trash by 9 o’clock in the evening, in a beautiful package, because there will be fresh buns in the morning. Well, you know what I mean….

Here is one of the sites dumpstermap.org

Entrance, Annual Pass. If you plan to travel around the national park, then at the entrance to the first one, be sure to buy an Annual Pass for all parks. Its cost is $80, it is valid for a year and pays off very quickly. You need one pass per car, if you suddenly enter the park without a car, you still need only one pass. At the entrance you need to show your passport, they check your photo with you and signatures. If your trip ended before December, then the pass can be sold, the signatures are easily erased. You can also buy someone's pass through the Amazon website, or by hand.

Overnight stays. In national parks, it is necessary to spend the night in specially designated paid campgrounds. This is a place with cleared ground for tents, a metal fire pit, a clean toilet and possibly a shower.

Life hack. As a rule, a box with envelopes is attached to the information stand. You must take one, fill in the information, put the indicated amount in it and lower it into another box, after tearing off the label, with the number on the envelope, by which you can be checked. We arrived at about eight o'clock in the evening, when the rangers were already leaving, took this envelope, collected the indicated amount in it, but never dropped it into another box. If the check did not come, but it did not come, we sorted the money back and threw out the envelope at the exit. And if she had come, we would have explained in clumsy English that we were stupid tourists.

My favorite state is Utah, it has an amazing red-yellow color, it is indented with canyons and rich in beautiful natural arches, in this state nature moves with the wind, weathers, crumbles, transforms ..

In the USA, I got to know and feel all kinds of deserts, and prickly, and rocky, and with snakes, and with dunes, and with white lizards, and with giant cacti and without, and even the one where the sky merges with the horizon and everything is lost idea of reality.

In the USA, I saw how close volcanoes, craters, lakes, the same deserts, dense forests, ocean shores are from each other, wild nature mountains, advanced civilization, geysers, wild deer, distinct cultures, snowdrifts and hot springs..

The idea of travel appeared after the first trip to America, combined with a cruise on Caribbean Sea from Miami. The country seemed very interesting, unusual and comfortable for staying and independent travel. And the history of the United States is not so ancient, which allows you to better feel it and draw some parallels.
It was decided to continue on warm summer days in the northeast, capturing the largest and famous cities from the must see category.

In our time of the Internet, Google map and navigators, the preparation of such a trip is not difficult and even very exciting. True, then more than once I caught myself feeling that I had already seen it all and I was walking, for example, in Chicago, as in Moscow, which, incidentally, did not spoil the impressions received at all.

The Internet resources http://samsebeskazal.livejournal.com/ and Vinsky's forum http://forum.awd.ru provided great assistance in preparing the trip, for which I am sincerely grateful to all the authors.

The route consisted of a 4-day stay in New York, then a rental car trip to Niagara Falls, Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, Philadelphia and after a short rest on the beaches of Atlantic City, return directly to JFK airport.

Googlemaps calculates the time of movement between points quite accurately. There were doubts about the possibility of maintaining an average speed of about 100 km / h, but they quickly dissipated. Highways and interstates have no traffic lights, no traffic jams, and even junctions usually have a 45 mph limit sign. Road repair involves only reducing speed by 10-15 miles, and not many hours of traffic jam.

Only daytime, easy hauls were scheduled, with a sightseeing of the destination the next day.

Back in January, the route was calculated, hotels were booked along the route, and plane tickets were purchased. Oddly enough, this time profitable proposition presented by Aeroflot.

An Airbus called A. Sakharov was assigned to Aeroflot's signature flight SU-100.

Each passenger has his own monitor with a multimedia system. Take-off and landing show forward and downward views, during level flight you can watch films to choose from from about 50, play games or view information about the flight. Standard 2 meals a day and wine from a paper bag.

Flying up

Arrival in New York was marked by a 2-hour queue for passport control We were basically ready for it. Passengers on connecting flights were escorted out of the queue. In general, of course, New York is a city of queues, so it is better to plan visits to all sorts of popular tourist sites in the morning. Looking ahead, I’ll say that we went to the Empire State Building at 9 am without a queue at all, but in the afternoon, the Intrepid aircraft carrier museum took us in queues, probably a total of the same 2 hours.

Without further ado, we took a taxi to the hotel. Car service was offered for about the same money, only it had to be called from the airport and looked for somewhere. As it turned out, they drive up to the right of the exit from the airport, a little to the right behind the taxi rank, with a piece of paper pasted on the glass with the name of the person who ordered it.

Taxi drivers in New York drive with navigators. A native of China handed me this device with a request to get him a route. No problem. I knew the location of our hotel in Brooklyn as "Our Father". As a result, we arrived for 30 kopecks of dollars on the counter bypassing toll roads, this is at a flat rate from the airport 50$.

It’s evening time, it’s already late night in Moscow, so we didn’t go to Manhattan, we looked around in our Brooklyn district, had dinner, bought a MetroCard for a week at $ 29 from a machine at the Subway station. This pass allows you to make unlimited trips on the metro, bus and cable car Roosevelt Island for a week.

The next day we start at the Empire State Building in the morning. Riding the subway to Manhattan with New Yorkers grabbing iced coffee on the go.

Arrived just in time. The people aren't there yet. We looked at the postcards.

Viewpoint next door on Top of the Rock

The sea gates are visible in the distance New York Verrazano Neurose Bridge

Hudson

Lower Manhattan

flatiron building

East River, Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges

Empire State Building May 1, 1931 - the official opening of the building, which for more than 40 years has become the most tall building in New York, and around the globe. This is the first building in the world with over 100 floors. It has 102 floors in total. The basement, where the lobby is located, has a height of 5 floors. The skyscraper tower itself rises to the 86th floor and has a classic wedding cake shape with rectangular ledges. The upper floors "shrink" after certain distances and have a smaller area than the lower ones. This design allows much less shadowing of the streets and neighboring buildings. From the 86th floor, an art deco superstructure begins, ending. observation deck located on the 102nd floor. At the top of the skyscraper is a spire, originally intended for the mooring of airships. However, after a couple of practical attempts to moor to the spire, this idea had to be abandoned due to powerful updrafts air. Today, telecommunications equipment is installed on the spire of the skyscraper, which is actively used today.

Next, we examine the middle part of Manhattan ( Midtown Manhattan ) with Central Park.

US government debt scoreboard, including per household.

The famous Times Square staircase. under the steps are the box office of Broadway musicals.

Times Square
Times Square is nicknamed "the crossroads of the world", "The Great White Way", has achieved the status of being an iconic landmark of the world and a symbol of New York and all of the USA.