A month in North America

After nearly a month in the US and Canada, B and I are finally back in Toulouse.

We had a really good trip and got to see lots of family and lots of sights with not too many problems or delays (except you, landslide across the Trans Canada!)

I don't want to do a recap post about our trip, but a few things stuck out about differences in the US.

Structural differences that make walking difficult:
A friend of mine lives in a townhouse not far from a shopping center/strip mall. She rarely if ever walks there, even though it's barely a km away. I was sitting at an outside patio area at a different shopping center, and I realized that the apartments that were "just across the street" were actually really far away. With the roads so big, every intersection having multiple lanes, and the parking lots being so huge, nothing is made on the walking scale. At some of the intersections the road it three times as wide as a French street. No wonder no one wants to walk in San Diego! In Florida, my aunt's neighborhood actually has no sidewalks. She lives out in the Keys so there's very little traffic, but it seems proof that they didn't think many people would be walking.

Fruit and vegetables:
Apparently the only fruit America has are cantaloupe, pineapple, honeydew, seedless (and flavorless) grapes, and strawberries. A couple times we ordered the "seasonal fruit cup" or bought something like that at the grocery store, and it was always made of the exact same fruit. Apricots were selling for $1.99/lb, a few peaches and plums were out, and summer zucchini was hidden in the corner of the vegetable area. Every grocery store was overflowing with apples, bananas, grapes, even sometimes butternut squash and asparagus, even though most of those are out of season in late July. Little of the wonderful summer fruit I'm used to seeing in France was available, and when it was it was often expensive.

+ Tax:
I grew up doing math problems of calculating how much tax would be added on a purchase, but after living in France, it's just so much nicer to have the tax (and gratuity) included in the price. Whenever we went shopping or out to dinner, B was always checking with me "But how much is this actually going to cost?"

Following rules:
In San Francisco we bought 3 day passes to use the bus, cable cars, and trolley. We scratched off the days like the instructions said, then started traveling around. I quickly discovered though that they only ever checked the passes on the cable cars. You could just walk on to a bus or trolley and flash your closed pass and no drivers asked to check the dates. I never would have thought about cheating on the bus like that, but after living in France it seems "normal"! I did cheat one ride on our last day in town when we had done a lot of walking and needed to get back to the hotel to pick up our suitcases, but we calculated out how many rides you needed to take a day to save money with the pass and clearly San Francisco is making a lot of money on these passes so we didn't feel too bad. In the spirit of following rules, B also thought Americans were too "tame" in lining up and he would often shuffle his way up to the front of a line.

Smoking/cigarettes:
Does anyone in the US or Canada smoke anymore? I think the only people we saw/smelled smoking were tourists, and it was really nice to be in a practically smoke free country. You can eat outside at a restaurant and no one smokes. A lot of buildings have restrictions on even smoking outside (minimum 15 feet away from an entrance) and there were practically no cigarette butts on the ground. In San Francisco I saw ads for a new condo building that was 100% smoke free, as in you can't even smoke inside your own place if you live there.

Energy consumption:
People have big cars in the US and Canada, but I was surprised during this trip of the number of cars that had automatic temperature control systems that made it difficult or impossible to turn the AC on or off like I'm used to in French cars. A lot of my relatives' cars had automatic systems that maintained a desired temperature and you didn't control if the AC was on or not. B and I tend to be stingy with the AC in order to save gas, so this seemed really extravagant to me! I've gotten to use to turning off lights as soon as I leave a room and always turning our TV off (not just on standby), so I couldn't stop noticing all the "extra" energy consumption going on. My parents live in southern California were it rains about 30 days out of the entire year, yet they never ever air dry their clothes. I used to resent the fact that I had to be so conscientious about my energy consumption and couldn't just "live", but now I see my family as rather wasteful when there are simple things to do to save energy.

Shoe prices:
Why does France charge so much for shoes?!? We thought we would go browse at Nordstrom Rack, which is a store that sells all the old collections of the nice department store Nordstrom, and B and I each left the place with several pairs of shoes. I got a really nice pair of Via Spiga peep toe black heels for $107 (plus tax!), and I bought two pairs of the same style Miz Mooz mary jane's in different colors because I knew I would love them and not be able to find similar shoes for $35 in France.

Chardonnay or Cabernet?:
I am so glad to be back in the land of "terroirs". Americans seem so obsessed with the grape varieties in their wine and there's this weird idea that wine made with 100% of the same grapes is "pure" and better than mixed cepage wines. I'm also glad to be back in a country that doesn't offer mild white wine when you're having beef or a strong red wine when you're having delicate white fish. One of our French friends who has spent some time in the US pointed out that Americans view their beverage as something to drink because they're thirsty, not a coordinated accompaniment to the meal.

High Fructose Corn Syrup:
So glad to also be away from everything High Fructose Corn Syrup. It's crazy how much stuff has sugar or corn syrup in it: salad dressings, plain yogurt, bread, drinks...

I of course got a lot of questions about what I miss in France, and about the only thing I would really like to see arrive in France are the amazing massage chairs you sit in when you get a pedicure that keep the foot soak water hot. Otherwise, I think the US has a lot it should get from France.