Coast to Coast from Los Angeles to Key West

It was a great trip along the Interstate I-10, a long motorway that crosses all the southern states from Los Angeles to Jacksonville in Florida. We followed the motorway, preferring alternative routes but basically parallel to the I-10, and we used the motorway only when darkness fell, for obvious orientation reasons and to avoid finding ourselves lost on the prairies at night. First of all, some very useful tips, some of which perhaps a bit obvious but true. The figures I give are the cost for two people. Temperatures on average between 16 and 22 C°, with rare exceptions. Never snow. 1) Esta online: the Esta is a fee you have to pay before entering the United States. You pay it online and print the form, which must necessarily be presented at check-in at the departure airport. Without the Esta you don't have permission to enter the USA.

It's a fee that costs 14 dollars, but on the internet you'll find quite a few sites that invite you to fill in the form via their link. The ONLY site and link that will make you pay ONLY the 14 dollars and no other charge is... Unfortunately I fell into the trap and the Esta cost me 50 euros for nothing. 2) Globy Rosso health insurance: better to take it, because in the USA, as you know, you pay even for a stomach ache. We took it out with Allianz, 290 euros for 18 days. 3) Mobile phones. I had recently bought a dual sim phone and naively thought I'd bring the newest one. First mistake: I didn't know that dual sim phones are also dual band and therefore don't work in the USA. Only tri-band or quad-band ones work. I paid for my abysmal technological ignorance.

4) Credit cards: in the USA they only want credit cards, that is normal credit cards (the ones with the embossed numbers, to be clear); debit cards (top-up ones) like Poste pay are almost never accepted. If you have one, bring it, but don't rely on it too much. Increase your card's monthly credit before you leave. I had paid for the flights with my credit card, 1527 € Pisa-Paris-Los Angeles and back, and with the Poste pay debit card Orlando-Los Angeles one-way 236 € (for two people). I hadn't thought of increasing the credit on my card and discovered as soon as I arrived that, having a monthly credit of 1600 €, it was... maxed out. A disaster. Luckily I have another card with the Banco Posta, otherwise it would have been tough with just the 600 £ cash I had brought, and frankly weighing economically on my colleague's shoulders for personal expenses would have annoyed me quite a bit.

5) Plane: you're often tempted to choose the seat by the window, but on long routes like the one we took (Paris-Los Angeles) it's a mistake. Better the seat by the aisle. In 11 hours and 45 minutes of travel, stretching your legs more often is very useful, and if you're by the window you'll often feel embarrassed to wake your neighbour who's snoring in the middle of a sleep that will be uncomfortable but... lucky him. I never managed to close an eye and I watched 4 films. Besides, you travel at night and you can't see a thing from the window. You'll just be a prisoner of an uncomfortable seat. 6) Car rental: we rented with National a not exactly small car, a Ford Escape, which is an intermediate SUV.

Certainly quite a bit more expensive than others, but for a coast to coast frankly it's better to have a comfortable car given that you spend many hours of the day travelling in it, eating, drinking, munching the tide of tasty snacks and various junk that supermarkets and petrol stations are full of in the States. Total cost for 18 days with no excess and every possible type of insurance about 1000 £, including 250 £ of "drop-off", that is the extra amount you pay when you leave the car in a different and much more distant place than the one you started from. Obviously we paid the maximum amount. In the USA there are only cars with automatic transmission, so imagine having your left leg totally amputated, and not like me who, in the nervousness of the first moments, decided to press the clutch, slamming on the brakes and stopping the car dangerously.

We used a road atlas (The American Road Atlas The Lawrence Group) bought in the States at a petrol station (there are plenty of them) in 2006 during a previous trip, and it proved very useful. 7) Hotels: We always slept in motels more or less of the same standard. The following chains are reasonably priced: Travellodge, Days Inn, Econolodge, American Inn and Suites. Prices ranged between 69 and 79 dollars for a double room with two queen-size beds, that is each one and a half. Total hotel spend 1419 dollars. 8) Food: in the USA you don't spend much on eating (total 900 dollars); with 10 dollars you get a full meal with meat and vegetables (almost exclusively french fries or, for the more vegetarian, green vegetables, the Caesar salad dressed with "ranch dressing", which is a pleasant little sauce).

The way I see it, the meat is very good as long as they don't put the infamous "topping" on it, made with BBQ (a sort of sweeter and spicier ketchup... to me an absolute piece of junk) or Gravy sauce, which I've never tasted but which my colleague said was inedible. I'll take her word. Anyway, we're not the Italians who bring the Moka abroad. You eat what there is and if you don't like it... you leave it. As we did in New Orleans. We wanted to taste this infamous Cajun cuisine, the Jalapeno, the typical dish Jambalaya... Perhaps a sandwich with 7 layers of Calabrian 'nduja, the harder one perhaps (but I only say perhaps...) would have been more edible. Unfortunately our 50 dollars remained almost entirely on the plate while we put out the flames with the least suitable but... restorative palate extinguisher: water. A cross over the Jalapeno, Cajun and the rest. We felt very much...

like Alberto Sordi when with the "mostaaaaaard he wanted to kill us, the bugs" and "with this other one we'll kill the mouse"! 9) Entertainment: during the first three days of our stay in Los Angeles we devoted one day to Disneyland. Not exactly a cheap park... 174 dollars for two for one day, plus 15 dollars for parking. It's still a fun park even for adults. With this amount you can access all the rides (roller coasters, the cups that spin round and on themselves... etc etc). Bigger than Euro Disney in Paris, but the European one faithfully follows the original standard. A day when you become a child again with a much emptier wallet, because between tickets, parking, food and gadgets, the average spend is decidedly higher than in all the other places. The same can be said for Orlando, where there are countless theme parks that cost quite a lot.

We only went to Universal Studios (only one of the two parts) for the modest sum of 89 dollars each for one day. It would have been 124 dollars for one day if we had opted for the two parks, but frankly in one day it's already very hard to complete one. These amusement parks would be a joy for kids (but adults enjoy themselves too), but I imagine a family of four would have a not insignificant extra cost. 10) Our route. We travelled following the Interstate 10 from Los Angeles to Tallahassee (northern Florida) and then following the I-75 to Key West and back to Orlando, from where, after a three-day stay and returning the car, we set off for Los Angeles (by plane) to return to Italy.