Atlantic City

Atlantic City needs 1 day: touring the Boardwalk, the seaside wooden walkway that inspired the Monopoly game board, with its real street names, and trying your luck at one of its Atlantic-facing casinos, the same afternoon. May-September brings ideal beach weather. It's mid-priced, more accessible than Las Vegas for the East Coast. It was the first US city to build a wooden boardwalk by the sea, in 1870, and that original structure -rebuilt several times since- remains the city's tourist heart, with casinos legalized since 1976 as the country's second gambling mecca after Las Vegas.