Atlanta was the city that surprised me the most during our trip to the southern United States. I'm not a fan of The Walking Dead and did not expect much, or anything special, from this city I did not know. I only knew that I wouldn't be able to escape the many trees and mosquitoes - confirmed.   Unlike the plans for New Orleans and Miami, which were not really set, the itinerary for the (...)

The city in Louisiana was the first stop of a ten-day trip in the southern United States. This is our list of top-5 things to do if you ever visit it.   1. A street meal overlooking Mississippi The food in New Orleans was so good that we wanted to put together a best-of on the last day. At the end of the afternoon, when the sun was lower and the weather was far more pleasant, we bought a po' boy and a couple of beignets and went to sit by the river. We were tired, we needed to rest our (...)

The alarm clock rings in the morning. It's time to go to the game, a professional football game. The two sentences together are strange for us. Professional sports in Portugal - especially soccer - are increasingly nightly based. But in New Orleans, more than seven thousand miles away from Lisbon, we had not had breakfast yet and we were already thinking we couldn't be late for the game that began at noon.   We would never get there late. Usually, we like to arrive a long time before the (...)

"You will now see Laura Plantation to your left... and you'll understand why you made the right choice."   The words of Rick, the driver who took us to the Oak Alley Plantation and who had just left half our group on a different plantation, left us in suspense. What the hell would be so special about Oak Alley that those aloe and sugar cane fields we saw next to us would be so obviously a worse choice?   The Oak Alley Plantation is an old sugar cane plantation, built in the nineteenth (...)

Travel is not easy peasy. My brain, after I began thinking about what to do on a layover of nearly eight hours in Miami, is can attest to that. Let's break it down: to ensure the best price to New Orleans, we split our trip into two parts. First, we flew from Lisbon to Miami and then, independently, from Miami to New Orleans. This meant that any delay in the first flight, or customs, or (...)

In 2017 we traveled twice to the United States: we did the California Zephyr - a train that connects Chicago to Emeryville (San Francisco) - and we fell in love with the idea of traveling through the country's rail lines - and watched a game of the NFL team I support (New England Patriots).   By 2018, we had hoped to do a mix of the two: watch a game of Sarah's team (Green Bay Packers, Wisconsin) (...)

  A few days ago someone asked me: "Tell me what you liked about LA."   It's an easy but difficult challenge: to say that Venice is lovely, that the Downtown is what we never thought Los Angeles could be, that Hollywood is not full of crazy and half-naked girls and that Chinatown is another world, where one can communicate more easily in Spanish than English, is the easy part. The hard part is explaining how it made me love a city that, months before, made me roll my eyes when I thought (...)

  The LA Lakers' star said goodbye to the courts on April 13, 2016, with a memorable showing in which he scored 60 points in the win over the Utah Jazz. Behind him, he left a brilliant career with five titles and many nights that left us all in awe.   An unforgettable night   Wednesday, April 13, 2016. The world of sport had its eyes set on California. In the north, in Oakland, the Golden State Warriors were about to set a new record of regular season wins (73). Further south, in Los (...)

  It was the real American experience. A game that requires you to book a full day, the adventures through tight security, the protests of players about what Trump had said, the fans and the sleeping volcano that erupted because of Tom Brady.     Anticipation is the key   The logistics to go see a New England Patriots game were the most complex ever. Airline tickets were purchased the day the NFL announced the schedule: April 21. Tickets for the game were bought in the first five (...)