None of New England is "Real America" to most Americans so I wouldn't base my trip around that idea. It's small, affluent, white and much more liberal and similar to Europe than expected for its population density. Don't get me wrong, it's my favourite part of America by far (UK immigrant), but I wouldn't be 100% sure that it was the perfect short American break. The highlights here are the scenery, relatively slow living, quaint towns, high quality of life etc.
The best bits about America for someone coming for a short trip are usually the national parks and the huge cities (NYC metro area is like 2.5x bigger than London metro). Maybe the things you can't do back home for novelty like shooting a firearm.
So if food and nightlife are huge priorities and you can't rent a car, you should seriously consider going to NYC or Boston or similar. Good or even acceptable public transit is almost entirely absent here outside of the big cities.
Also, medium sized cities in America generally confer a huge culture shock on a European, they oftentimes have quite serious crime and homelessness compared to what you're used to. When combined with the car infrastructure, strip mall living and the fact that there are no cathedrals from the year 1100 this leads to pretty ugly cookie cutter cities IMHO. Most places bigger than 100k population and less than maybe 750k fall into this category for me.
If you can rent a car and are more interested in seeing the wee small quaint towns and the American quality of life, then buy the lonely planet guidebook and zip up the coast roads doing a classically American road trip, stopping into all the best bits. See some big mountains that we don't get back home, the lakes and forests, the wildlife is absolutely phenomenal etc.
LifeLongMedication t1_jadz9q6 wrote
Reply to comment by woodyrg14 in Me and my partner from England wanting to visit Connecticut by woodyrg14
None of New England is "Real America" to most Americans so I wouldn't base my trip around that idea. It's small, affluent, white and much more liberal and similar to Europe than expected for its population density. Don't get me wrong, it's my favourite part of America by far (UK immigrant), but I wouldn't be 100% sure that it was the perfect short American break. The highlights here are the scenery, relatively slow living, quaint towns, high quality of life etc.
The best bits about America for someone coming for a short trip are usually the national parks and the huge cities (NYC metro area is like 2.5x bigger than London metro). Maybe the things you can't do back home for novelty like shooting a firearm.
So if food and nightlife are huge priorities and you can't rent a car, you should seriously consider going to NYC or Boston or similar. Good or even acceptable public transit is almost entirely absent here outside of the big cities.
Also, medium sized cities in America generally confer a huge culture shock on a European, they oftentimes have quite serious crime and homelessness compared to what you're used to. When combined with the car infrastructure, strip mall living and the fact that there are no cathedrals from the year 1100 this leads to pretty ugly cookie cutter cities IMHO. Most places bigger than 100k population and less than maybe 750k fall into this category for me.
If you can rent a car and are more interested in seeing the wee small quaint towns and the American quality of life, then buy the lonely planet guidebook and zip up the coast roads doing a classically American road trip, stopping into all the best bits. See some big mountains that we don't get back home, the lakes and forests, the wildlife is absolutely phenomenal etc.