United States - Route 66
18 to 29/11/2019
2 adults + 1 child of 2 years and 11 months old
Itinerary
18/11 - Lisbon - Dublin- Los Angeles
19/11 - Los Angeles
20/11 - Los Angeles - Las Vegas
21/11 - Las Vegas
22/11 - Las Vegas- Grand Canyon- Flagstaff
23/11 - Flagstaff - Albuquerque
24/11 - Albuquerque - Oklahoma
25/11 - Oklahoma-St. Louis
26/11 - St. Louis - Chicago
27/11 - Chicago
28/11 - Chicago-Dublin-Lisboa
29/11 - Dublin-Lisbon
FLIGHT LISBON-LOS ANGELES
FLIGHT CHICAGO-LISBON
ROUTE 66
Our Stories
November 18th
We left the house early, we had everything prepared since the 17th, we just had to take a shower and go out, the day was going to be long. We had a stopover in Dublin, we were very well attended by the lady at the Check in desk / gate. With a small child, sometimes things don't always go as expected and the lady was patient and even called Maria to priority boarding at the entrance to the plane. All on board and ready for the first 2:55 hrs of flight.
We arrived in Dublin and we had less than two hours to make the transfer for the flight to Los Angeles. We knew that in Dublin we would have to pass immigration from the United States and we were afraid that this would make us lose some time. To increase the stress, Maria's stroller did not appear, and the airport employee was not keen to help, we lost a good 20 minutes there in this saga. As soon as the cart appeared, we ran through the airport, found a dead end, until at last we found a man who opened a door for us and helped us get to immigration. We had 1:30 hr and we still had to pass immigration and eat something before boarding (all with a small child, who did not want to sit in the stroller and remembered to have 5 tantrums on the way there).
Fortunately, immigration was a simple and fast process, in our case it did not last more than 15 minutes (we advise everyone to go to the United States from Portugal, to make this stop in Dublin, as it will save them a lot of time when entering the USA. Usually the immigration process is done on arrival in the USA, which implies that all passengers on each flight that arrives have to form the queue at the same time. In the case of Dublin, people go through immigration as they arrive at the airport and not all at the same time and in addition the arrival in the USA is considered to be an internal flight, we just had to pick up the bags and go on).
After 10:55 hrs of flight, we finally arrived in LA it was 6:30 pm local, 2:30 am in Portugal, we were dead and to bury ourselves we had to wait almost 2 hours for Maria's car seat *we chose to take the car seat because it was much cheaper than renting one in the USA, at rent a car, and in addition AerLingus does not charge extra for the stroller and baby seat.
We took the bus from the rent a car to take us to the park where all the rental cars are. We opted to rent the car through Hertz because it was the best price/quality we got, the price was quite affordable considering that we were going to pick up the car in LA and deliver it 10 days later in Chicago, approximately 4000km away (we paid USD371,00 approximately €330.00 for a Toyota Corolla sedan). The process was quick and we were able to leave for the hotel, which was about 50 km away from the airport.
We arrived, had a Chinese dinner inside the hotel which turned out to be one of the best and cheapest meals we had in the 11 days we were on American soil! And we went to sleep because even though it was about 23 hrs in LA, for us it was already 7:00 and we had slept only a couple of hours on the plane.
November 19th
We woke up early and went to see a little bit of the city, we only had 1 day to see everything LA had to offer and we started with the most famous sign in the world ... HOLLYWOOD.
When we were almost arriving, we stopped for the first breakfast, in a typical American cafe, it was reasonable and we paid USD35 for this meal.
The viewpoint, one of the many from which you can take the famous pictures with the sign, also had incredible views of the LA skyline. It was a good start to the journey through Uncle Sam's land
From there we went to visit another of the most tourist spots in the city, the famous walk of fame, with its infinity of little purple stars with names of celebrities, and... that's just it. Next, all the glamor of one of the richest neighborhoods in the world was waiting for us: Beverly Hills. We didn't see any famous people and we're not architects, so we didn't spend a lot of time there, but, it even smells like millions of dollars, it's impressive.
It was here that we had our first contact with Route 66!
We went to the no less famous Santa Monica Pier, our expectations were high in relation to the pier, however, it was one of the biggest disappointments of this trip. It was a dirty, old place, with many homeless people (throughout the day we saw that it was a general reality in the city) and too touristy (in the worst sense of the word). We had lunch here with a hamburger, a hot dog and some nuggets (which tasted like old oil), in a kind of small town party stall, and that cost us a total of USD40.00. We started to realize that eating in the USA was a luxury item, later we would discover that parking in a park is another American luxury item.
After that lunch we went to get our feet wet in the Pacific before heading to the business center of the city (that wet feet was what it was worth to go there).
Since we didn't have a lot of time and we still wanted to see the city center, we left the Santa Monica Pier and headed for the Los Angeles business center through Marina del Rey.
We parked near the Staples Center and we were lucky that the Lakers played at home, so we could feel a little bit of the atmosphere around an NBA game, we didn't see the game and we also couldn't find a place to have dinner, so we decided to go back to the hotel and on the way we stopped at a TGIFriday's for dinner.
The next day we were going to start the journey on Mother Road! Route 66 was waiting for us!
November 20th
We woke up, checked out, put everything in the car, everything was cloudy, contrary to the trend of the previous day ... Until then we had only caught hot days. We set out for the sin city: Las Vegas.
Before leaving LA, it started to rain, it started with a rain of nothing and turned into a storm in 20 seconds, we went on and suddenly the rain turned to hail, a pebble here, another one there, another 20 seconds it got worse and it was everything white with hail, we are still at a turtle's pace, it was very dangerous to walk there. As soon as we entered Route 66, the road lanes were completely white from the falling hail and the famous paintings on the road floor were barely visible.
We hadn’t even walked 1 km when in front of us, a car got out of the way and slid down the road, completely out of control because of the ice... in our direction. Fortunately we were able to swerve and luckily for the driver of the other car, when he left the track he ended up being able to stop safely at the side of the road... we all left unharmed.
From then on, fortunately the weather improved and it was always driving until lunchtime where in Barstow we stopped at a Denny’s. We were excited when we saw that there was soup on the menu for Maria, but the potato soup was a thin puree with fried bacon on top.
We ate and then went to the nearest Walmart to buy something to eat in the car and not have to stop until Vegas (shopping at the supermarket in the USA is also not cheap, but it is more affordable than eating in restaurants).
We went on and on to Las Vegas, passed through the Mojave Desert, where we had some of the first most iconic landscapes on Route 66 and started to realize that this would be a truly memorable trip.
The final destination of the day is not on Route 66 but we thought it was a mandatory destination and we wanted to get married in Vegas, but Elvis is a VERY expensive priest... we gave up. It was already night when we arrived, and, about 100 km before, there was already a flash of the sin city lights.
We stayed at the Stratosphere Casino Hotel & Tower, a little away from the center of the Strip, the main street where most of the hotels in the city are located. An old hotel, which like almost all in the area, lives of the casino on the hotel entrance, unfortunately we forgot to play and missed the opportunity to maybe get very rich... on the other hand, we won the status of 2 of the few people who went to Vegas and didn't play in a casino ... we are still poor.
At night we still risked an exit, but after 5 minutes of walking, it started raining, which together with the cold and added to the doubtful area made us return to the hotel and order a pizza at the room service (very good by the way). The night was complicated, the hotel did not have black out and Maria, who was not yet adapted to the jet lag, saw the lights through the window and stood up to insist SCREAMING that we open the window because she thought it was already day. We survived!
November 21st
We woke up early and as Las Vegas is a city to be seen at night, we took the opportunity to take a stroll to area 51 which is just over 100 km from the city, a detour to see a gas station in the middle of the desert, with t-shirts and ETs dolls for sale for the triple they are worth. If area 51 has nothing to see, the same cannot be said of the landscapes until then, they were worth the trip! It's just a pity we didn't see any ET ... We were really hoping we would.
We returned to Las Vegas, arrived around lunchtime and stopped at an outlet because Maria needed clothes and boots. We ate at the Shake Shack, some hamburgers with more fame than profit, we did the shopping and went to the center. One of the advantages of visiting Las Vegas in November is that at 4:30 pm it is already night, when it is worth going out to see the lights and the life of that main avenue. Everything outside of this avenue and during the day is completely banal, a city like 500 thousand others.
We tried to go to the city's most famous scoreboard, Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas ...., but there was a huge line of people to take pictures and we were happy with a photo taken from the car. We stopped at a park and went to see everything on foot, next to the park there was a M&M store and we started the tour there, we went for a walk to the Bellagio to see the spectacle of the hotel's light fountains: we loved it. On the way back we stopped for dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp.
It is a really impressive city with its hotels with copies of sights and all the lighting, but ... is seen. It is not the place that urges us to return one day, don't get it wrong, it is worth the visit, but not a return. :P
November 22nd
We returned to Route 66 and made the second planned detour of that trip, the Grand Canyon. It was unthinkable to make this trip and not make this detour.
That day we caught the first snow of the trip, and the Grand Canyon itself had some areas covered with snow. We entered the park through the South Rim, the closest to Route 66. Entrance to the park is charged by car, we payed USD35, and entitles you to free entries for 7 days. For us it was only for a few hours, but it was very worth it, it is one of the landscapes that we will never forget, the most spectacular that we have seen until today, it is really impressive, and as much as we try, we will never be able to explain, in words or images, the grandeur of that place.
We left grateful for the opportunity to get to know that place and hungry because we had only eaten ham sandwiches and cookies in the car (the cookies from that country are worth it, all of them, anywhere! They are all wonderful!). We stopped at the nearest McDonalds and found that even eating at McDonalds is expensive.
It was 5:30 pm and that meal served us as lunch and dinner.
When we finished it was a dark night, a cracking cold and we still had 115 kilometers to Flagstaff. This part of the trip turned out to be one of the most unforgettable of the entire trip. In 90 of those 115 km, not a single car passed us, lighting: zero, -6 degrees on the thermometer and a fog at road level worthy of a horror movie, we expected that at any moment a bloody person would appear fleeing from the killer and asking us for help on the road ... luckily the only thing we found standing in the middle of the road were two deer, who were frightened by the car and ran away before we had time to get the camera out.
The fog and cold continued until we arrived to the motel (on a trip like this we had to try the typical Route 66 accommodation at least once. And we got well accommodated for a modest price, we paid €58.00 per night, with breakfast), before wenting to the hotel we stoped at the supermarket to buy things for the next day. From now on it was just Route 66 to Chicago. We still had 2667 km to go!
November 23rd
Once again the day started early, everyone ready for another day on the road, we had breakfast at the hotel, Maria played a lot with the snow that was accumulated in the park, we got in the car that was all frozen, we stopped to put gas in the car and buy anything to stave off hunger along the way. We found an orange-flavored coca cola, I've never seen so many soda flavor options in my life, but as I'm obsessed with the artificial cherry flavor, I tasted everything that was “anything - cherry” (Camila).
We stopped for a traditional photo of a giant route 66 symbol on the ground in Winslow - Arizona, but, we were unlucky, it was the Christmas Day parade in the city, the sidewalks were full of stalls with food, sweets, crafts and bric-a-brac in general, super nice people, Maria had the opportunity to feed a llama (some gentlemen asked if she wanted to and she accepted), won sweets, a lady stopped us and talked a little to ask where we were from (as we had the camera on the neck, she immediately saw that we were tourists) and gave us a warm welcome, we were pity that we had to go before the parade, but our time was counted to the end and after a walk through the city we had to follow.
We continued with some stops in typical landscapes for some photos and stopped in Gallup, New Mexico, for our first Mexican food in the USA, we left quite satisfied, the food was not the healthiest, but, it always had more homemade air than most meals over there. From there, the plan was to drive all the way to Albuquerque but a huge traffic jam almost changed our plans. Suddenly on the highway, traffic was at a standstill with hundreds of trucks and cars at a snail's pace. We saw on the GPS that there were secondary roads almost parallel to our itinerary and we decided to try our luck ... We left the Highway as soon as we could and suddenly we were on a dirt road, more suitable for a 4x4 than for our car. The truth is that these were some different 40 minutes but worth the adventure and that allowed us to save a lot of time because we saw the endless line at the side of the highway while we continued on our way and only returned to the highway when we saw that there was no traffic .
Upon arrival we took advantage of the fact that the hotel had a laundry and we did our laundry. Tired of the fastfood we entered the internet to see what minimally healthy options were there in the area and we found a restaurant specialized in Ramen and we thought it was a good option to give Maria a soup... and it was, it was delicious and it costed us only USD 22 a meal for the 3. Happy stomach and pocket!
November 24th
Another long day of travel and beautiful scenery. On this day we would cross the midpoint of route 66, our trip was already halfway through and there was still so much to see, our plan A was to have lunch in Amarillo, so we went for it!
Our first stop was in Tucumcari, a city with an indigenous influence, we took some pictures, some of them in front of the most famous mural in the city, but we couldn't stay long, Amarillo was still many kilometers away.
The midpoint is signposted and we wanted to take a picture, but with Maria sleeping we had to run... withou success! She woke up anyway, which turned out to be good, because we managed to take the photo “calmly” (the calm of a child who has just woken up, maybe you know). In the end, everything went well and... towards our lunch of champions!
At 3pm, we finally arrived at the Big Texan Steak Ranch, a must for those who make Route 66. A typical saloon, well known for its giant steaks, for those who can try a free meal if they manage to eat half an ox and all its accompaniments in an hour (there were those giant time counters, a kind of stage for the food orgy), no one tried when we were there ... much to our disappointment. We ordered ¼ of the steak for the three and we almost couldn't finish it because we were full to the top. A toast to those who completed the challenge! All this to say that it is worth a stop there, the staff is friendly, the atmosphere is super funny and maybe you are more lucky than us and able to witness the attempt of some glutton to eat half an ox in that stage.
We left at 16:30 and I don't even know how we were still able to walk because we were so full, the night was already falling and we still needed to see another very well known place that was there in the area, the Cadillac Ranch!
We ran to get some light and get some pictures for posterity and ... not only did we get the pics, but we got some of the most spectacular photos from the trip! It was close but it was well worth it! 10 cadillacs placed on the floor, in the middle of nowhere, all graffited and there were some cans of spray paint for those who wanted to leave their mark, we just took the pictures, and we tried to record that unusual place, at least, in our memory forever.
From that point, we went to the highway and drove 4 hours to Oklahoma, as it was already night, it was not worth taking Route 66.
Oklahoma surprised us by its size, the city is gigantic. We found the hotel after more than half an hour crossing the city, we went to the supermarket and went back to the hotel to rest, it was a long day.
November 25th
This was the least productive day of all. We caught a lot of traffic along the way and ended up doing most of the route on the highway, leaving just to see some attractions we had heard about and to do 17 miles of the route within the state of Kansas.
We had lunch at Wendy's, another fastfood where you spend too much for what you eat, it's exactly the same as any other, price / quality.
We still managed to get some of the most surreal photos from the trip so far ... The blue whale of Catoosa (a slide in the middle of a lake with the shape of a whale), some characters from the Disney - Pixar Cars animation, along the road and a replica of Stonehenge in Rolla (it's not just Vegas that replicates monuments from outside).
At dinner time we arrived in Saint Louis, another gigantic city, we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, close to the hotel and then went to rest for our last Km on the Route 66
The next stop would be in Chicago and the end of Route 66.
November 26th
We left early, to see 1% of what Saint Louis had to offer, with the time counted and a sky so dark that it didn't promise anything good, breakfast in the belly, all in the car, 5 minutes down the road and... Maria needed to pee... there we went! After a pee watering some plants, we went to see the city from a the Mississippi River Overlook viewpoint, we took the opportunity to take some pictures with mr. Malcom W Martin, a D-day participant in the invasion of Normandy in World War II, who was sitting there admiring the views, was silent, did not tell us much about him, nor Google.
We went for a panoramic by car until we passed the basilica of St Louis, we found it curious, there, in a mostly Protestant country and decided to enter, unlike the majority of the Europeans, this basilica was heated, point for the USA, it also had a very beautiful mosaic collection, one of the largest in the world. From there we continued the car ride and went through points we had researched before and found it interesting to go see them “live”: a university campus, the Saint Louis Cardinals baseball stadium and the city's arch. After this "lightning" panoramic, we continued to our last day on Route 66.
On the internet we had seen a place where you could feed bunnies, and we decided to go and do it with Maria, it was cold and raining a lot, the bunnies were not there, but we met Henry, a very nice gentleman, who showed us some things to do on this end of the route (if you intend to do Route 66 starting in Chicago, it’s worth a stop over there for a chat with him). With the day moving forward, we ran to find a place to have lunch and enjoy the rest of the day's lighting.
We found a place called Golden Corral, in Springfield IL a buffet with dozens of types of food, good and cheap! After so many days based on fastfood, It felt great. After that, he went to look for some Route 66 symbol on the ground to take a picture (we didn't photographed those in California and that was our last chance. If you want to take your picture with the symbol on the ground, do it on California!) and head to Chicago. In the 15 minutes we were standing there until we got a photo without cars passing by, 2 people stopped to ask if everything was okay and if we needed help, it was not the first time that happened to us on the trip, we were surprised by their friendliness.
We ended up having dinner at the hotel and went to sleep to wake up early and get to know as much of the windy city as possible.
November 27th
We finally got to the beggining (in our case the end) of Route 66, we were already feeling that “sorrow” because we were finishing the trip, but ... there was still a lot of Chicago to see.
It was a very cold day and we started looking for a park to leave the car, because parking on the street was very expensive, so in the park we left the car, and for one day we paid 34 dollars for the park, on the street we would pay practically the same, life goes on. We stopped very close to Millennium Park, next to Michigan lake, we started our walking tour of the park. It is huge! There was a giant Christmas tree, and at the foot of the tree, amazingly, an ice rink, always full from the time we arrived until the night, reminded us of the Christmas movies, it's really something they love, there were people from all the ages, who were skating well, badly... a funny environment, none of us knows how to skate on the ice, and despite Maria's requested, we managed to give her a convincing excuse and we went to the cloud gate, a giant mirrored bean, which was in the middle of the park, it gave a funny effect, mirrored the sky, the buildings, the park.
We tried a group photo but were unsuccessful, seeing our attempt a homeless person asked if he could help us. Why not? We gave him the camera and this photo must have been in a photo frame at home, this guy, in the best of photos, cut off our heads, only Maria appears with a head and the bean does not appear either! A photo for posterity (the laughs we give when we see them are guaranteed). We went to the Christmas tree, but a photo was almost impossible with the amount of people trying the same thing, we went to a Dunkin 'Donuts for a coffee to scare the cold, but we ended up eating ice cream (ice cream).
We continued to walk around that area, it had a different view from the cities in which we had been on that trip, the buildings, the “air train”, stores... we entered a walmart to find gloves for Maria, we could not find them and then we walked until lunch time. We went to Giordano's to try a pizza much commented on the net, on many websites people said it was worth going there to try it. We ordered this pizza, it was a kind of a quiche, the dough was buttery, like a pie and it was not flat, it had about 5 kilos of cheese, but we here at home are not the greatest cheese lovers on the planet... all this to say that cheese lovers will love it, we liked it, but it's not worth the $47 we left there. We would not go back there on a next visit to Chicago.
Leaving the restaurant Maria asked for the stroller and blanket (rare thing) and fell asleep in 2 seconds, we took advantage and went to Walmart to buy a toy she was dating because her birthday was coming and from there another walk, we went back to the park and the Christmas lights, the cold and the skating rink with those Christmas carols in the background were really an image that we had of the USA. We picked up the car and stopped to take some pictures of the Chicago skyline at night from the Adler Planetarium. From there we just went to an outlet and went to the hotel, it was very cold, we had dinner at the hotel and slept. It was our last night in American territory.
November 28th
Officially, our last day of vacation, packed, we left the hotel to enjoy Chicago until lunchtime.
We went back to the Adler planetarium to take pictures of the skyline in daylight, and if the day before we thought it was cold, we had changed our minds that morning, it was impossible to take your hands out of your pockets for more than 10 seconds without them start hurting from the cold, that hour it was snowing a little, but it stopped soon, we left before freezing and went straight to the Willis Tower to see the city from above, on the skydeck, on the 103rd floor. From there, it was easier to see the snow falling, we spent a lot of time in lines because they had a kind of balcony all glass from which you could take better pictures, the floor was also made of glass and the sensation was of floating 103 floors above from the ground. A funny experience. We recommend.
After that he went to lunch, deliver the car and look for our door at the Chicago airport, we would leave at 8:30 pm. We ended up not buying any souvenirs in the city because we had the airport duty free, but, big mistake. It took a lot of digging to find some decent souvenirs, there was almost nothing there.
We were lucky with the flight, the plane was almost empty, we had extra space to spend 7 hours to Dublin.
As we had a gap of 6 hours until the next flight to Lisbon, we went to the center of Dublin, André already knew it but I didn't, and Dublin did not make my eyes shine during those hours we spent there. The rain didn't help either ... maybe on another day, with more time ...
At 13:00 hrs we returned to the airport, had lunch there and finally got on the last flight, in a few hours we would be home.
