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Help me plan a west coast roadtrip
burntheladle
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, a friend and I are thinking of doing a roadtrip in early May. Neither of us are Americans, or know anything much about America...
We would be starting in San Francisco, and we would like to go to:
- Disneyland
- An awesome beach
- Las Vegas
We have 10-14 days. We could finish in either Los Angeles or Las Vegas.
Where should we go? What order should we do things in? We have a budget of probably about $2000-$3000 and are more than happy to do youth hostels etc.
We would be starting in San Francisco, and we would like to go to:
- Disneyland
- An awesome beach
- Las Vegas
We have 10-14 days. We could finish in either Los Angeles or Las Vegas.
Where should we go? What order should we do things in? We have a budget of probably about $2000-$3000 and are more than happy to do youth hostels etc.
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burntheladle on
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It's also not really including the cost of renting a car, which I imagine will be a little pricey since we're both 21 and neither of us have american car insurance.
San Fransisco is a great place to start, its a very cool big city full of all sorts of shenanigans to be had and you can take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) pretty much anywhere in the city with smaller public transportation lines connecting to it. I would also suggest visiting Berkeley, its a BART ride away and its one of my favorite places in NorCal.
If you take the coast highway south (101 or the 1 depending on where you are) you can stop at Santa Cruz, Monterey and Pasa Robles, Santa Cruz is another cool hippy-ish town, Monterey is a nice coastal town and unless I'm mistaken has an impressive aquarium and Pasa Robles makes some pretty decent wine. Santa Barbara would be your next stop on the way to Los Angeles, great town for a party and full of friendly people.
Los Angeles is gigantic and full of cool stuff to do, I've only ever visited for a few days here and there so I will have to ask my brother what his favorite things are. Plus you can go see Disneyland while you are there.
San Diego is where I grew up and through all my traveling its still my favorite city, we have the best beaches hands down and there is a ton of stuff to do. If you are interested PM me and my friends and I will show you around when you guys get here. You can also hit the 15 freeway on the way out which will take you all the way to Las Vegas, another of my favorite cities.
I've been going to Vegas pretty much twice a year for the past 10 years. Its an easy weekend getaway, you just pile in the car with your friends, and once you are there you can see Vegas a couple different ways. My dad likes to hit all the nice restaurants, my buddy Jon likes the sprawling arcades and clubs, I like the shopping, drinking and gambling. (A tip about drinking in Vegas, get drunk in your room off booze you bring and then buy beers when you are out, you will save hundreds of dollars, also, you can have open containers of alcohol in public unlike most American cities)
At the moment, I'm thinking of leaving here on the sunday/monday, aiming to arrive in Las Vegas by friday (via Disneyland); spending a long weekend there and then heading to San Diego for a few days, then back to LA to fly out on the thurs/friday.
I thought it would be better to do Disneyland midweek and Vegas on the weekend, but does it actually matter?
The other option would be to just drive down the coast, then across to Vegas via Disneyland, which might be more economical in terms of fuel/car rental (we could just drop the car off when we arrived in Vegas, which would save us a few days).
Personally, as fun as the Santa Cruz boardwalk seems (don't know if you've looked at that or not), it also seems horribly expensive for not a lot to do. However, Santa Cruz is awesome and has some great beaches. When my sis lived there, she'd take me to a couple that were off a path between apartments down a one way street and all of a sudden you're in this little cove on an empty beach. Glorious. Also, if you can find it (I'm still looking for a name), there's a kickass pizza joint there that was small, almost a hole-in-the-wall, but they had no menu. Instead, it was slices of whatever random cool shit they made that day, example Chicken Ceaser Salad pizza.
Also Legoland is really expensive, and probably skippable unless you're ecstatic into LEGOs.
As far as Disneyland goes, you'll enjoy yourself immensely more if you break it up into two days; one for California Adventure, and another for Disneyland. And there are a ton of passes available, many that let you wander between parks (which are located next to each other but don't share an entrance per say; there's a strip of stores between them. The day you do Disneyland, get there as early as you can and abuse the Fastpasses. The day you do California Adventure, you can sleep in a couple hours, as the lines are never as long except for a couple things (which you can also Fastpass abuse; namely, Soarin' and the raft ride ... possibly the Toy Story thing, but haven't been there since before that) and you'll easily see everything in a day. Enough time to catch a couple more things in Disneyland, or spend a few hours shopping. Also, make sure to see Disneyland's early showing (if it's in summer) of Fantasmic! and then the fireworks show almost immediately after. And the next day, go see California Adventure's Electric Parade.
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This is a solid plan, however if you're going to drive to Vegas from LA on a Friday, leave EARLY. Like before noon.