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The land of the free

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Latha Anantharaman
Last Updated : Jan 21 2013 | 4:14 AM IST

A sneak peek at attractions and experiences in the USA that won’t burn a hole in your pocket.

Recession or no recession, a holiday in the United States of America is an expensive proposition. Public transport isn’t cheap, tickets to many museums and tourist attractions are high for the moderately-heeled Indian traveller, and everyone wants to sell you Evian, when all you want is a clear, cold drink of American tap water.

But not for nothing is America called the land of the free. You can by all means pay for those incomparable experiences and views, but do stop to taste the treats munificent government and private foundations lay out for everyone.

In New York City, a visit to the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island Museum is most memorable, but if all you really want is photographs of the Lady, just take the free, round-trip Staten Island Ferry from the southern tip of Manhattan. It sails past the Statue and brings you back again. Many of the city’s sterling museums, botanical gardens and zoos have donation days, when you pay a voluntary donation instead of a fixed admission to explore the delights within. Various institutions have free admission on some afternoons. The destination’s website usually offers a schedule of these free days and you can time your visit accordingly.

Smaller, more digestible exhibits on history and culture can come up as pleasant surprises in the New York Public Library and other accessible buildings, and sometimes even in subway stations. At the Hard Rock Café’s store at Times Square, walk in to gawp freely at Paul McCartney’s guitar and other Beatles memorabilia, even if you aren’t buying. Times Square itself is now free of murderous traffic, and you could sit on a lawn chair in the middle of the street and read its neon narratives at leisure for free.

Sidewalk cafés in New York’s numerous small and large parks are a great place to watch the world go by.

Bryant Park behind the public library is a generous outdoor reading room where you can flip through international journals over a milkshake. Street mimes and break dancers perform at Central Park. High Line Park — created from a disused railway line — offers intimate views of the city from a two-storey high vantage point. Battery Park is positively countrified, with prairie grass blowing in the wind and squirrels scampering up your bench.

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When the weather is blustery, settle down with your sandwiches in atria open to the public at corporate buildings like the Trump Tower or Rockefeller Center.

In Chicago, bring a picnic dinner and blanket to enjoy the free concerts at Millennium Park. There is also some superb installation art here, including the Bean, a most reflective sculpture. Enjoy a cheap architectural tour of Chicago by reading about the buildings online and printing your own map. The August Field Museum has free days, although you still pay for special exhibitions.

Even the rather put-upon city of Detroit is generous with its spaces. The Campus Martius at the centre of Detroit is an open park with wrought-iron chairs around a fountain (and free Wi-Fi). Through this park runs the famed Woodward Avenue towards the Woodward Dream Cruise — a parade of vintage cars that rolls out on the third Saturday of every August. Take in clear views of unabashed gas-guzzlers, wearing chrome grins, white-walled tires and peroxide-blonde drivers. Some spectators eat at the sidewalk cafés, but many bring their own lawn chairs and sandwiches. Anything you do buy, in the way of Dream Cruise baseball caps and T-shirts, supports local charities.

The GM Renaissance Center offers free tours, and behind it is the Riverwalk, a brick-paved promenade along the Detroit River with a fountain where kids can play.

Washington, DC is probably the most lavish in its free tourist sights, including the Jefferson Memorial, Arlington Cemetery, and Ford Theatre — where Lincoln was assassinated. At the Folger Shakespeare Library, pop into a magnificent theatre and look through exhibitions of the First Folio and other Shakespearean texts. Large parts of the Library of Congress are open for public viewing. The crown of it all is the Smithsonian Institute, a complex of museums and galleries on aeronautics, Native Americans, pop art, precious gems. The best in the world, they glow with the wisdom and art of civilisations. Sometimes the best things in life really are free.

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First Published: Aug 01 2010 | 1:22 AM IST

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