The beginning of our journey will be on August 5th, departing at 8 a.m. with a British Airways flight from Milan Linate, destination London Heathrow. There, we’ll get on a Boeing 747 jumbo and we’ll arrive in Washington Dulles airport at 1.40 p.m., local time. We paid €800 for the ticket: we bought it on the British Airways website at the beginning of March.
At first, we decided we wanted a huge SUV, big beyond any reasons, like a Ford Tahoe or some of Jack Bauer’s “24” cars. Instead, at Dulles Airport, we’ll rent a much smaller Toyota Prius from Hertz (€1,200 for 22 days), just to be more environment friendly (and accidentally, to spend less in fuel). With any luck, she’ll be with us for more than 9.000 km thorough the immense US planes and deserts, all the way to Los Angeles, California, where we’ll leave her and rent a Ford Mustang Convertible (€340 for the final 4 days), much more thirsty on fuel but also more appropriate to Beverly Hills and Hollywood. We’ll leave L.A. on August 30th, after 26 days spent on the road.
In Washington, for ESTA reasons, we’ve already book the first two night in the hotel, very near to the White House (where, despite our pledges to the Italian Embassy in Washington and to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, we won’t be able to say hi to Barack).
To sum up, before even leaving we’ve already paid €1,700.
From Washington, we’ll start our journey towards Los Angeles. We’ll visit metropolis like Toronto, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco; natural beauties like Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon and a dozen other parks, so unique to be appear almost alien; all of this, driving on lonely roads in the middle of nowhere, from Oklahoma City to Albuquerque, or on breathtaking ones, like The California 1, from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Since we thought New York would deserve a more in depth visit, we’ve spent 10 days during 2009 Christmas Holidays. So we could skip it in our coast to coast, saving our time for other places, and we could also better appreciate one of the most intresting cities in the world (click here to read about our New York trip).