The sights of USA

The Paul Revere House, a small clapboard affair originally built in 1680, is worth a visit - and not just because it's the oldest house in Boston. The blacksmith Revere was one of three horseback messengers who carried advance warning to American rebels on 18 April 1775, of the British night march into Concord and Lexington that sparked the War of Independence. He lived here right through the revolutionary period, managing to father a dozen kiddies when he wasn't out riding for the righteous.

Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty, the most enduring symbol of New York City - and indeed, of the USA - can trace its unlikely origins to a pair of Parisian Republicans. In 1865, political activist Edouard René Lefebvre de Laboulaye and sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi went to a dinner party and came away with the notion of building a monument honoring the American conception of political freedom, which they would then donate to the Land of Opportunity. Twenty-one years later, on October28, 1886, the 151ft (45m) Liberty Enlightening the World, modeled on the Colossus of Rhodes, was finally unveiled in New York harbor before President Grover Cleveland and a harbor full of tooting ships. It's a 354-step climb to the statue's crown, the equivalent of climbing a 22-story building, and if you want to tackle it, start early to avoid the crowds - it's hard to contemplate the American dream with your nose to the tail of the person in front.

Times Square

Dubbed the 'Great White Way' after its bright lights, Times Square has long been celebrated as New York's glittery crossroads. The Square went into deep decline during the 1960s when the movie palaces turned triple X and the area became known as a hangout for every colorful, crazy or dangerous character in Midtown. These days the sleaze has mostly given way to an infectious vibrancy, and the combination of color, zipping message boards and massive TV screens makes for quite a sight. Up to a million people gather here every New Year's Eve to see a brightly lit ball descend from the roof of One Times Square at midnight, an event that lasts just 90 seconds and leaves most of the revelers wondering what to do with themselves for the rest of the night.A visit to fascinating Mount Vernon, George Washington's Virginia home for many years, is second in popularity only to the White House as a visited historic house. The country estate of this quintessential country gentleman has been meticulously restored, giving an insight into late-18th century plantation life. Although the grounds are immaculate and the house more than stately, all is not ostentation: there are many glimpses of the farm's working nature and regular living history presentations. George died here in a four-poster bed on 14 December 1799, and both he and his wife Martha are buried in an enclosure on the south side of the 19-room mansion.

Monticello

Everybody knows Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's Virginia home, probably because it is on the back of the nickel coin (the perfect souvenir?). The house is very much the embodiment of its creator, Jefferson, who oversaw all stages of its development over a period of 40 years and incorporated many of his fascinating if somewhat eccentric ideas in the design. The president's private chambers were set up so that he got out of the right side of his bed to write and on the left side to get dressed. Other unusual features include a concave mirror in the entrance hall that greets visitors with their own upside down image, hidden and narrow staircases (Jefferson considered ordinary staircases unsightly space wasters), the two-pen 'polygraph' used to duplicate correspondence and an indoor compass connected to a weather vane on the roof. Jefferson died here in 1826 and is buried on the estate where his favorite oak tree once stood.

Jamestown

Jamestown, Virginia, was founded in May 1607 when Discovery, Godspeed and Susan Constant moored in deep waters off the peninsula between the James and York rivers and 104 men and boys disembarked. It was the first permanent English settlement on the continent but was doomed to failure because of starvation, disease and attacks by Native Americans. In 1619 the first representative assembly met and Jamestown served as Virginia's capital from then until 1699. When the statehouse had been burned for a fourth time, the settlers accepted that they had chosen a poor site and they moved inland to what is now Williamsburg. The original Jamestown is now a collection of ruins, historical markers, visitor centers and ongoing archaeological digs.

So we see now that USA is really fascinating country that has a lot of sights to be visited.

Off the beaten tracks

For somebody who is already see all that wonderful things in America might be interesting to discover something new, where the tourists are not so common and whereyou can meet only native sitizens, but they are also the sights of USA.

Highway 395

Out where the Sierras drop straight down into the sagebrush of eastern California's Owens Valley, truckers, hunters and road-trippers cruise Hwy 395. Though the road runs several thousand miles from the northern fringes of the Los Angeles basin to the Canadian border, the best leg stretches 250mi (400km) between Lone Pine, in the shadow of 14,500ft (4350m) Mt Whitney, and Carson City, Nevada. You can reenact scenes from Gunga Din and How the West Was Won, both shot in the Alabama Hills just west of Lone Pine, where's there's a film festival every October.

The Manzanar National Historic Site, about half an hour's drive north of Lone Pine, consists of the remains of one of the infamous 'relocation' camps in which American citizens of Japanese descent were imprisoned during WWII. A little farther on is the funky

Eastern California Museum, a mixed bag of displays on natural history, Paiute Indian basketry and ancient Milk of Magnesia bottles. If you've still got a nest egg left when you reach Carson City, east of Lake Tahoe just over the Nevada border, let it ride at one of the town's many casinos.