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New Orleans, hotel within the Quarter. No shortage of food and visuals. More to absorb than you could on ten visits.
Shuttle to the Honey Island Swamp Tour available from French Quarter.
Seattle, hotel boundaries: Virginia/5th/Union. So much to do. You could spend a week checking off things to see.
Don't let anyone talk you out of seeing the Chihuly Glass Works.
Bar Harbor (Maine of course), B&Bs along Mt. Desert toward Main. No fast food or chains here!
All wonderful during tour date window.
I give extra points to Bar Harbor. It's a place thats not usually on the common list of places to go, but once you've been you'll be glad you did. Maine is one of the most beautiful places in America.
Have fun!
I agree on Bar Harbor. It's beautiful! I hope we can get back there some day.
I also recommend Charleston. Perfect city, May is beautiful, warm but not too. There is a lot to do without taking official tours. There is just walking along Broad Street to visiting the market area to sitting in a park reading and lots and lots of bars, restaurants etc.
I second Vegas! SO much to do there!! It will be warm there, but all the hotels are next to each other and most are connected so if you're hot you can just walk through the hotels instead of outside. Everyone walks there, you can get free drinks AND take them outside with you! A club in every hotel with all different kinds of music. Live bands, piano bars, the shows are awesome! I go every year! It's perfect for 2-4 days!
Why are people so obsessed with Vegas? I seriously don't get it. I don't gamble. I don't drink. Not at all into the bar scene. I am not interested in the shows. Seems like that's all there is to Vegas.
I second Vegas! SO much to do there!! It will be warm there, but all the hotels are next to each other and most are connected so if you're hot you can just walk through the hotels instead of outside. Everyone walks there, you can get free drinks AND take them outside with you! A club in every hotel with all different kinds of music. Live bands, piano bars, the shows are awesome! I go every year! It's perfect for 2-4 days!
Not interested in Vegas (been there, done that), but thanks. I am looking for more culture, a place that is more real. I would go back if I had a work conference. It is a fun place for that sort of thing. But I don't have any interest in going there for my own personal vacation.
Stay in the French Quarter in New Orleans. I went during the French Quarter festival some years ago. Make sure you enjoy some of that unique food down there. Also, check out the Garden District.
Head to the Cafe Du Monde for some beignets.
I am going to be staying at the Q&C, which I believe is right on the edge of the French Quarter. It's a pretty good discount if you stay during the week ($149/night vs. $275/nigh for weekend nights). I'm excited!
Last edited by bizcuit; 03-18-2017 at 11:48 AM..
Reason: forgot to add link.
Thanks, that's comforting to hear! Quebec City did cross my mind as well. DC, maybe not so much. Not in much in the mood to traipse around to monuments and such, at least not for this trip.
DC also kind of bangs up at night. I have a friend in Arlington and one night the fog over the Washington Monument was cool that I wanted to get a photograph, so we drove into DC...and the place was completely deserted, at least by the mall.
However...not too far away lies Alexandria Old Town, in Virginia. There's a whole area along the waterfront with interesting shops and restaurants and bars and historical sites, too. I spent almost an hour in a shop where a woman put on cotton gloves and pulled out a drawer containing a 17th-century map of Manhattan drawn by a Dutch cartographer once she found out I was from NJ/the NYC metro area. (The map was for sale for $17K--I passed on that deal.)
It was raining heavily, and we had gone there for a wine event that was washed out. I intend to go back there and see more. As a person who also will travel alone, I think that's a good choice.
Why are people so obsessed with Vegas? I seriously don't get it. I don't gamble. I don't drink. Not at all into the bar scene. I am not interested in the shows. Seems like that's all there is to Vegas.
There's more. I went in 2009 with four teenagers and two of their mothers. One woman's sister flew in from CA to join us. She and I were the only two who gambled, and that was just a little bit.
We took a Hummer tour out to Red Rock Canyon, where you can see the ancient petroglyphs, and the driver took us to a spot where we could search and find rocks with fossils of sea creatures in them from millions of years ago. I kept one, it's in my garden here in NJ.
We also did a Haunted Las Vegas Tour at night on a bus. The stories were fun and it was cool to see the sites where Bugsy Siegel supposedly walks in the "dead hours" and where Liberace has supposedly been spotted and where a massacre of pioneers took place and is supposed to be haunting the park that's there now.
We did see a show--that was the point--one of the girls has a chronic disease and the trip was in part a Make-A-Wish donation for her to see Criss Angel. (The rest of us who weren't part of the Make-A-Wish event went to see Carrot Top.)
Even if you don't gamble or drink or do anything, it's still fun to at least once walk down the strip. There's so much to see--so much over-the-top craziness in the buildings and casinos.
And then we drove the three hours from Vegas to the Western Rim of the Grand Canyon, stopping to see Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam along the way.
I don't think this is the sort of thing the OP is seeking, but I just wanted to address this poster because that's a common refrain, "I don't gamble, etc., so why would I go to Vegas." If you don't like history or geology or nature, either--well, then, no, you won't like Vegas.
Thanks for everyone's responses! I've decided to move forward with my plans for New Orleans. Booked my trip this morning, in fact. I love some of the other suggestions though, and will consider them for other trips. I have always want to go to Charleston and Savannah as well, so maybe next Fall.
+1 for Charleston and Savannah. Here's another suggestion to file away for future reference: I did a vacation in the Maritime Provinces some years ago, and planned a couple of nights in Halifax, NS. I fell in love with the town and ended up there more like a week. Lots of old world charm and new world history, beautiful and lively downtown area.
OP--by your name, are you in New Hampshire? What about Portland, or is that too close?
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