Plymouth

All of this started at Plymouth in the year 1620. At Plimouth Plantation, a living history museum that depicts life for the Pilgrims in 1627, visitors can step back in time. The Mayflower II, a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to the New World, is the next stop on the tour.

Or they might be one of the reportedly one million people that visit Plymouth Rock each year, the alleged location of the Pilgrims' first landing. Also available to visitors are tours of cranberry farms, historic mansions, and golfing on more than a dozen different courses.

Plymouth was designed with lovers of US history in mind. A full-scale reproduction of the actual Mayflower, which transported the first English colonists to Massachusetts' shores in 1620, is available for you to board. And don't forget Plymouth Rock, the well-known (if very unimpressive) boulder where the Pilgrims are said to have landed. Original objects from the early settlement, such as a cradle, cabinets, a razor kit, and one silk shoe, are kept in the Pilgrim Hall Museum.

In the Plimouth Patuxet Museums, costumed interpreters bring the past to life at four locations, including a Wampanoag Native American house site and a 17th-century English hamlet.

• Location: Massachusetts