What the World Cup Reveals about the US: Going Beyond New York and LA
For many international travelers, a first trip to the United States looks a lot like a greatest-hits itinerary. New York. Miami. Los Angeles. Las Vegas. Maybe San Francisco. Maybe Orlando.
These are the places that dominate movies, TV, Instagram, and the mental picture many people build of America long before they ever step on a plane. And to be clear, I understand the appeal. I love famous places too. If you’ve always dreamed of seeing Times Square, the Hollywood sign, or the Miami beaches, you should absolutely go.
But I also think one of the biggest mistakes travelers can make in the US is letting the famous version of America become the only version they see.
As an American who has traveled to more than 100 countries, I’ve learned that the point of travel isn’t just to stand in front of the most recognizable monument and say you were there. The best trips are the ones that leave room for curiosity. They’re the ones where you learn something about the people, the culture, the food, the traditions, and the everyday life in a place. They’re the ones where you leave understanding a destination a little better than you did before you arrived.
That’s why I think the World Cup is such an interesting moment for travel in the United States.
Yes, people are coming for football. But they’re also arriving in a country that is much larger, more regional, and more complicated than many first-time visitors expect. The World Cup is giving fans a reason to come to America, but it’s also giving them a chance to experience a version of the US that goes far beyond the most famous skylines and landmarks.
And if they do it right, that broader version of America may end up being one of the best parts of the trip.
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The Version of America Most Visitors Know Before They Arrive
For a lot of international travelers, “America” means a very specific set of images.
It’s yellow taxis and Manhattan skyscrapers. It’s palm trees and nightlife in Miami. It’s freeways, beaches, and celebrities in Los Angeles. It’s casinos and neon signs in Las Vegas. These are the places that show up over and over again in pop culture, so it makes sense that they become the default itinerary.
There’s nothing wrong with that. These places are popular for a reason, and I’d never tell someone to skip a destination they’ve dreamed about visiting. But famous cities and iconic monuments can only tell you so much about a country this big.
The United States isn’t one easy travel experience. It’s a tons of regions, identities, landscapes, foods, sports traditions, and ways of life that can feel surprisingly different from one place to the next. If you only see the biggest tourist highlights, you’ll absolutely have a great trip. You just may not have much of a sense of the country itself.
That’s the difference I keep coming back to when I think about travel.
I love famous monuments. I’m never going to pretend I don’t. I will happily go see the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, or the Statue of Liberty. But I also don’t think a monument, no matter how iconic, tells you enough about a place on its own. If you want to understand a destination, you have to go beyond the postcard picture. You have to eat local food, spend time in neighborhoods, observe daily life, talk to people, notice traditions, and stay curious about what makes one place different from another.
The same is true in the United States.
The World Cup is Giving Visitors a Different Version of the US
One of the things I love about big international sporting events is that they often pull travelers outside their usual patterns.
A World Cup trip isn’t always a classic “I’m going to spend five days in one city and see the main sights” kind of trip. Fans build bigger itineraries around it. They add a few days before or after. They travel between matches. They combine football with road trips, beaches, family visits, national parks, food stops, or a city they never would have chosen on its own.
That matters in a country like the US, because some of the most exciting parts of traveling here happen outside the places that dominate first-time itineraries.
The World Cup may be what gets people on the plane, but it also creates an opportunity to experience the “real” America: the version of the country that lives in neighborhood restaurants, road trip stops, baseball games, grocery store snack aisles, summer festivals, local bars, and the side trips that don’t usually make the guidebooks.
It’s one thing to say you visited the United States. It’s another to come home with a sense of how different one part of the country feels from another, how seriously people take barbecue, how far “nearby” can actually be, and how much of American culture lives in the everyday details rather than the bucket-list landmarks.
America is Much Bigger Than Many Visitors Expect
If there’s one thing I would tell every first-time visitor to the United States before they start planning a World Cup trip, it’s this… The U.S. is probably bigger than you think.
And I don’t just mean “big” in a vague sense. I mean big in the way that can completely destroy your itinerary if you don’t understand the distances before you book it.
This is one of the biggest surprises for many international visitors, especially those coming from Europe. On a map, it can be tempting to look at a few US cities and think, “We’ll just drive between them.” Sometimes that works. Sometimes it absolutely does not.
Driving from Los Angeles to Miami is roughly 2,700+ miles / 4,300+ km. For reference, that’s more than driving across all of Europe. From Lisbon, Portugal to Kyiv, Ukraine is about 2,550+ miles / 4,100+ km. Even within a single state, the scale can be surprising. Texas alone is enormous. Driving from El Paso to Houston takes roughly 10.5 hours… and you’re still in Texas.
That doesn’t mean road trips are a bad idea. In fact, road trips can be one of the best parts of traveling in the US. But it does mean you need to be strategic. A side trip that looks simple on the map may be far more time-consuming than you expect, and not every pair of cities makes sense to connect by car.
If you’re planning a World Cup trip in the United States, one of the smartest things you can do is stop thinking in terms of “America” as a single destination and start thinking in terms of regions. A trip built around one region or one sensible route will almost always be more enjoyable than trying to zigzag across the country because the map makes it look possible.
America Makes More Sense Once You Stop Treating It as One Thing
This is a part of the US I want visitors to understand.
America is not one culture packaged into one country. It’s not one food, one accent, one pace of life, or one way of traveling. It’s a country of regional identities and contradictions. That’s part of what makes it interesting, but it’s also why it can be hard to understand if all you see is the polished, most internationally famous version of it.
Take food. “American food” is not one thing. Barbecue alone changes dramatically depending on where you are. So does Mexican food. So does seafood. So do comfort foods, desserts, and breakfast staples. The same is true of sports culture, architecture, local traditions, and even what a summer weekend looks like.
A baseball game on a summer evening, a neighborhood seafood shack, a roadside diner, a small-town festival, a beach town, a mountain detour, a college football conversation, a barbecue place with a line out the door… these things may not be what people imagine when they picture the United States, but they often explain the country better than a photo of Time Square.
That’s why I think the World Cup is such a good excuse to see more of it.
What World Cup Fans are Discovering About America
If you’re coming to the US for the World Cup, there’s a good chance you’ll experience more than football whether you mean to or not. You’ll be filling free afternoons, figuring out where to eat, moving between cities, and trying to understand the place you’re in. That’s where the country starts to reveal itself.
Here are some of the things I think visitors are likely to discover.
1. Food is One of the Best Ways to Understand America’s Regions
Many first-time visitors arrive expecting burgers, giant sodas, and fast food. And yes, those things exist. But reducing American food to fast food misses one of the best parts of traveling here.
The US is serious about food. Barbecue changes from one part of the country to another. Southern comfort food is not the same as what you’ll find in the Northeast. Tex-Mex has its own identity. Seafood traditions vary wildly depending on the coast. Even desserts and breakfast foods can tell you something about where you are.
For World Cup fans, food is one of the easiest ways to go beyond the stadium and experience the place itself. Eat the local barbecue. Try the diner breakfast. Order the regional dessert. Ask a bartender where they’d send a friend for tacos, wings, seafood, or pie. You don’t need a complicated food itinerary. You just need to care enough not to eat every meal in the most convenient tourist trap.
2. Sports Culture in the US Extends Far Beyond the Match
Americans are very good at turning sports into a full-day event. In fact, it was one of my favorite parts of college at Florida State University. Football Saturdays.
That can mean a tailgate in a parking lot before kickoff, a neighborhood sports bar packed for a match, a baseball game on an off day, or an entire city talking about a team as if everyone has a shared emotional investment in it. Even if football is the reason you’re here, adding another sports experience can tell you a lot about local culture.
Baseball is the obvious summer example. You don’t need to know the rules perfectly to enjoy a game. Go for the atmosphere: the hot dogs, the cold beer, the families in team shirts, the music between innings, and the very American feeling of a sport that is as much about ritual as it is about action.
And if you’re not going to another live sporting event, even sitting in a sports bar during the World Cup can become a memorable cultural experience in its own right.
3. Everyday America Can Be as Rewarding as the Famous Attractions
Some of the most memorable moments in the US are not the ones you plan around months in advance.
They’re the giant grocery store run before a road trip. (Have you been to a Costco?!) The diner breakfast that comes with endless coffee refills. The bartender who wants to know where you’re from and then gives you three restaurant recommendations. The beach town or small-town main street you stop in because you had an extra day. The gas station snack aisle that somehow becomes a travel memory.
I know that sounds small, but I think it matters. Famous monuments tell you where you are. Everyday experiences tell you how a place lives.
If you only move between major attractions, you’ll miss a lot of what makes the US feel like the US.
4. Road Trips are Still One of the Best Ways to Experience the US (Just Be Smart About It)
Road trips are one of the classic American travel experiences for a reason. In a country this big, with so much variation between regions, driving can be one of the best ways to understand how landscapes, towns, food, and culture shift from place to place.
But this is where I’d add a big caveat for World Cup visitors: not every US route makes sense as a road trip.
Driving from Los Angeles to Miami because both cities are on your itinerary is the kind of thing that looks great in theory but is exhausting in reality unless you have a lot of time. The same goes for assuming a drive across Texas is quick just because it’s “one state.” America rewards road trips, but it rewards sensible road trips. Think more… the coastal drive, the mountain detour, the beach town stop, the few-hour stretch that turns travel day into part of the adventure.
The key is choosing drives that add to the trip instead of consuming it.
5. The Best Parts of the Trip May Be the Ones You Didn’t Originally Plan
This is true in a lot of countries, but it’s especially true in the US. The famous places are often why people come, but the memorable stories are often what happens around them.
Maybe it’s the barbecue place a local insisted you try. Maybe it’s the baseball game you decided to go to on a free night. Maybe it’s the small town you stopped in because you were driving between destinations. Maybe it’s the state park, beach, lake, or neighborhood market that broke up the trip in the best possible way.
That’s what I hope World Cup visitors leave room for… not just the checklist, but the curiosity.
Why Going Beyond the Famous Cities and Monuments Matters
I want to be clear that I’m not arguing against famous places. I love famous places. I think there’s joy in seeing the icons you’ve known your whole life. If you’re in New York, go see the Time Square. If you’ve always wanted to visit Miami or Los Angeles, absolutely do it.
But don’t let those places be the whole trip.
Because if all you do is move from landmark to landmark, you may come home having “seen” America without really experiencing much of it. You’ll have the photos, but you may not have much of a feel for the country itself.
To me, travel is about curiosity. It’s about wanting to understand not just what a place looks like, but how it feels. What people eat. How far they drive. What they do on weekends. How sports fit into local life. What the grocery store looks like. What the small-town downtown looks like. What a summer evening at a local event feels like. What conversations happen at a bar when a major tournament is on.
That’s why going beyond the obvious matters. It gives you context. It makes the trip more memorable. And it gives you a better chance of actually understanding the place you traveled all that way to see.
Meet the America We Live In
Perhaps the biggest reason to get off the beaten tourist path in the United States is to see how most of the population actually lives. You’ll discover hidden accents you never knew existed, try foods you’ve never even heard of, and learn a lot about architecture and fashion… not always in the best of ways.
But perhaps most of all, truly understanding the United States is getting a feel for multiple places and realizing that the local farmers in Ohio lead a significantly different lifestyle than those on Wall Street in New York. We’re talking barely an overlap beyond their nationality.
How to Experience More of America During a World Cup Trip
If you’re coming to the US for the World Cup and want to experience more than just the matches and monuments, here are a few ways to do it.
1. Add at Least One Extra Day (If You Can)
The easiest way to improve a World Cup trip is to stop treating it as a pure in-and-out sports trip. One extra day can give you time for a neighborhood, a side trip, a beach, a local food stop, or just enough breathing room to explore.
2. Build Your Trip around a Region, Not the Entire Country
The US is too large to treat like one compact destination. Instead of trying to combine everything, focus on a logical route or region and explore that well. If you want to go across the country, book a flight. Don’t spend all of your time in transit.
3. Choose One Famous Experience and One Everyday Experience in Each Stop
See the skyline or the landmark, but also eat the local food, visit the neighborhood coffee shop, go to the sports bar, or spend time somewhere people actually live.
4. Be Strategic About Driving
Road trips can be fantastic, but not every route is worth it. Shorter regional drives often add more to the trip than trying to cover massive distances just to say you did.
5. Ask Locals What They’d Tell a Friend to Do
This is one of the fastest ways to find the places that feel more personal and less generic.
The World Cup Could Give You a Better Version of America
I’m excited about the World Cup because it is bringing people to different parts of the United States, and they’re getting an opportunity to really experience the US in all of its glory (the good and the bad)!
It might show them that the US is much bigger than they expected. It might teach them that “nearby” means something very different here than it does in much of Europe. It might introduce them to a barbecue joint, a neighborhood diner, a sports bar full of strangers, a beach town, a road trip, or a small slice of everyday American life, like Ranch dressing, they never would have planned around on purpose.
And that, to me, is where the trip gets interesting.
FAQ: What the World Cup Reveals About America
Yes. If you’re already making the trip, it’s a great opportunity to add a few extra days and experience more than just the match itself. The US is large and diverse, so even one side trip or local experience can make a big difference.
Absolutely. This is one of the biggest surprises for first-time visitors. Distances between cities can be much longer than they appear on a map, and even driving within one state can take far more time than expected.
Sometimes, but not always. Shorter regional road trips can be fantastic. Cross-country or very long-distance drives usually only make sense if you have plenty of time and want the road trip to be a major part of the trip. Otherwise, hop on a flight.
See the famous sights if they matter to you, but also make time for local food, neighborhoods, sports culture, everyday experiences, and side trips that help you understand the place beyond the main attractions.
Regional food, road trips, local bars and restaurants, small towns, grocery stores, state parks, and conversations with locals can all reveal a lot about everyday life and regional culture in the United States.
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