Made an excellent choice to organize a nice trip to California alone? Or, again, you are already a person who travels on his own, and the destination you have decided to reach this year is the famous ” Golden State” US? Do you want to finally live your very personal “California Dream” and sleep in your very personal “Hotel California” (even if one of the famous songs is in Mexico)? Well! You’ve come to the right article. Here are a series of indications that will be useful for you to plan, organize and above all live your trip to California in the best possible way.

The itinerary!

The United States is an excellent destination for those who want to travel alone because they are very organized in receptivity, have a constant flow of departures and arrivals and above all a wide range of offers from very cheap to the most luxurious.

So going alone to the United States is also a good choice for those who wish to find the company there, which is not very difficult, especially in California.

All in all the United States is a country to which one could also leave without having prepared a specific itinerary, but at least one glance is always better to give it. Even for this type of ” adventure ” trip, it is certainly better to acquire as much information as possible before departure. Unless you have unlimited time and funds, starting prepares you to avoid problems and get the most, even if you haven’t booked anything before. I understand that it might seem a little spoiled, but you won’t have to take time away from your living room to find the information you need.

So better to choose the destinations you want to visit first. For example, if you love the metropolis you will certainly not be able to visit San Francisco and Los Angeles. If instead once in the USA you intend to cross the border, San Diego is certainly the most comfortable metropolis.

Then there are other destinations, like Yosemite Park with its impressively huge sequoias, Death Valley and the Mojave Desert. And so on.

So once you have chosen the destinations to visit, you can start thinking about how to structure the itinerary.

Depending on how your goals are distributed you will need to decide what type of itinerary to do:

• at a fixed destination, and therefore stay only in a place close to all your points of interest;
• itinerant, if you want to reach place after place in succession;
• road trip, if you start from one place to add another, making the journey an integral part of the journey;
• itinerary with ” fires”, if instead, you decide to stay in two or more places that collect a series of points of interest, and from there visit them.

Flight, stay and travel

As for the flight, if you decide to save, know that the best airline in the world for long-range low-cost flights is the Norwegian that offers really cheap offers from Italy to the United States, often direct (a direct outbound flight from Rome to San Francisco, for example, could cost you as little as € 189!).

As for the internal movements of your trip to California alone, know that in the US you travel a lot by plane and by public transport, even if, if you have sufficient practicality in the guide and a little desire to get involved, the best way is the car.

With the right spirit, renting a car is a way to live a local experience, to feel truly part of the country, because you move as a local would. Moreover, it allows having the maximum freedom in the movements and the stops, allowing to reach the less ” touristy ” places.

In California, it costs everything much less (rent, gasoline, etc.). And if you take your car already at the airport, you will save a lot of time and money on transfers. But we must be careful, especially in the metropolis, which is often difficult to travel and offer few and very expensive parking lots. For this reason, the ideal would be to stay in suburban hotels or even better in the suburbs of the big cities (obviously checking that these are the safest ones) and using public transport to go to the centre.

It is also necessary to be well informed about the different local traffic rules and habits, the signs etc.

In general, the signals are not as cryptic as ours. Many signs have the meaning written: “left lane must turn left ” ( the left lane must turn left ). Imagine instead a poor American in Italy when he finds himself in front of a yellow triangle with an exclamation point!

However, the rules can be very different: you can go with the red light (yes you read right!) If you have to turn immediately to the right and unless otherwise indicated (obviously with a writing that says it literally).

Pay attention to the lanes reserved for Pool Cars, cars with more than one person on board, and therefore you will not be able to use them unless you have towed a beautiful and shapely Venice Beach skater.

And so on.

It should, therefore, be emphasized that one must feel serene and confident in wanting to drive abroad.

This mode of travel can also save you a lot of hotels, allowing you to stay outside the city centre or in the neighbouring cities.

Vice versa Remember to check the connections between selected hotels or B & Bs and your points of interest because if you travel alone you will certainly not be able to split the taxi costs.

In any case, it is essential to check that the areas where you decide to go and especially to spend the night are safe (some areas are not advisable, especially at night and for those who travel alone, or worse, alone). Beyond all the chatter you can hear, and with the exception of some opinions read about the structure and the area in which it is located, numerous official ” Crime Charts ” are available online that report the statistics on the crimes of the different areas, sometimes even from palace to palace, allowing you to really assess the potential risks present at the exact point where you want to stay.

Free (or almost)?

Are you broke? However, you have no excuse to postpone your trip to California alone! First of all, ” Free Travel ” does not necessarily mean hitchhiking and sleeping on the ground at stations or under bridges. First, because this is illegal and second because it would be wandering and not really “travelling”, especially now that we are no longer in the 60s.

Here are some of the many tricks that will allow you to travel in a decidedly budget-friendly manner.

Moving around and staying in a camper van is another great way to visit California, especially in the numerous parks and outside the metropolis. There are some sites where you can find a rich list of companies that rent you the camper almost for free (often at a symbolic price of a dollar) because they need to move it from one place to another. You will only have to take the motorhome after a certain date to transfer it, with the full freedom of choice of the route and within a certain number of days, to the destination location. Often you will even be reimbursed for fuel!

If I would like to enrich your travel experience by getting to know and befriend the locals, here is a great free way to combine cultural exchange with savings.

Another example to significantly lower the budget of your trip is to make smart purchases that will allow you to recover a bit of money with the savings made in the fact that in the United States some things cost much less than in Italy, like the tricks, jeans, some clothing and some technological products.