Destination: USA

LONELY PLANET'S OFFICIAL GUIDEBOOK INFORMATION

Top Tens

HOEDOWNS & HOOTENANNIES

Americans love to party, and they've created so many great annual celebrations, it's painful to keep this list to only 10 - but still, at any of these, you're guaranteed a time to remember.

• Rose Parade, Los Angeles (California), January 1
• Sundance Film Festival, Park City (Utah), late January
• Mardi Gras, New Orleans (Louisiana), February or March
• South by Southwest, Austin (Texas), March
• Spoleto USA, Charleston (South Carolina), late May and early June
• Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival, Oklahoma City (Oklahoma), early June
• SF Gay Pride Month, San Francisco (California), June
• Blues Festival, Chicago (Illinois), early June
• American Royal Barbecue, Kansas City (Missouri), early October
• Fantasy Fest, Key West (Florida), late October

HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED

An American road trip needs a proper score. These albums and artists are some of the essential originals that contemporary American music is built on. Download them onto your iPod, hit shuffle and the miles will fly by.

• Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Fives and Hot Sevens
• Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues
• Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
• Ella Fitzgerald, The Cole Porter Songbook
• Jimi Hendrix, Are You Experienced?
• BB King, Live at the Regal
• Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? movie soundtrack
• Elvis Presley, Elvis' Golden Records
• Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

THE DREAM FACTORY

Here are 10 great Hollywood films that evoke a vivid slice of the American experience. These films and filmmakers are the dream-makers who have helped craft the nation's mythologies.

• The General (1927) Directors: Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman
• Gone with the Wind (1939) Director: Victor Fleming
• Citizen Kane (1941) Director: Orson Welles
• The Searchers (1956) Director: John Ford
• West Side Story (1961) Directors: Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins
• The Godfather trilogy (1971-90) Director: Francis Ford Coppola
• Chinatown (1974) Director: Roman Polanski
• Blue Velvet (1986) Director: David Lynch
• Fargo (1996) Director: Joel Coen
• 25th Hour (2003) Director: Spike Lee

Travelling to USA?
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