Budget for tax and tip on top of prices
The price on the menu is not what you pay: sales tax is added at checkout and tipping 18-22% in restaurants is effectively mandatory. Mentally add about 30% to any restaurant price to avoid surprises.
Travel guideLast updated August 17, 2026
USA Travel Guide: Essentials, Local Tips & Mobile Data
Plan your USA trip: tipping culture, transport realities, when to visit, traveler tips, and how to get affordable mobile data with an eSIM.
The United States is less a single destination than fifty of them: the skyline of New York, the national parks of Utah and Arizona, the music cities of Nashville and New Orleans, the Pacific Coast Highway and everything in between.
Distances are the thing first-time visitors underestimate. Flying between regions is normal, cities outside the Northeast are built around cars, and a two-week trip is better spent on one or two regions than on a coast-to-coast sprint.
Food is regional in a way first-timers underestimate. New England clam shacks, Texas barbecue, New Orleans po'boys, California produce, and diner coffee at 6am are different countries that happen to share a currency. Eat what the place is famous for and skip the national chains you already know.
Build the trip around one story: a national-park road trip, a city-and-coast pairing, or a music-and-food crawl. The USA rewards depth. The visitors who leave exhausted are usually the ones who treated it like a continent-sized scavenger hunt.
Essentials
United States Travel Essentials
- Currency
- US Dollar (USD). Cards accepted everywhere; listed prices exclude sales tax.
- Languages
- English; Spanish widely spoken in many regions.
- Plug Type
- Type A / B, 120V.
- Emergency Number
- 911
- Best Time to Visit
- May to September for national parks; September to November for the big cities.
- Tipping
- Expected: 18-22% in restaurants, a dollar or two per drink at bars. It is a real part of workers' income.
- Timezone
- Spans UTC-5 (Eastern) to UTC-10 (Hawaii).
- Tap Water
- Safe to drink nationwide; free refills are standard.
- Getting Around
- Rent a car outside major Northeast cities. Domestic flights are the practical way to cover long distances.
- Internet & Coverage
- Good LTE/5G in cities and along interstates; expect dead zones in remote parks and deserts.
Traveler tips
Tips from fellow travelers
Real advice from people who have been to United States, curated by our team with links to the original sources.
Do not try to see it all
The distances are enormous - Los Angeles to New York is like Lisbon to Moscow. Pick one region per trip. A week in the Southwest parks or in New England beats three days each in four time zones.
Reserve national parks early
Popular parks like Yosemite, Zion and Glacier now use timed-entry reservations in peak season, and in-park lodges sell out close to a year ahead. Check recreation.gov as soon as your dates are set.
Free tap water and free refills are real
Ask for tap water and you get a full glass, then usually a refill, at no charge. Soft drinks work the same way. It is one of the few reliably generous things about American dining — use it.
City transit is excellent in a handful of places and optional everywhere else
New York, Chicago, Boston, DC and San Francisco have transit you can live on. Most other cities assume a car or a rideshare. Budget Uber as a line item, or rent a car the morning you leave the walkable core.
FAQ
United States travel questions, answered
eSIM plans
Stay connected in United States
With rideshares, mobile boarding passes and park reservation apps, the US assumes you are online at all times. An eSIM with a generous data allowance costs far less than international roaming and works the moment you clear immigration.
Park timed-entry, airline apps and turn-by-turn driving through a state you have never seen all assume a working connection. Roaming from overseas plans is brutal here. An eSIM is the cheaper, calmer way to land and just go.
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