USA

America is something completely different to Europe!
At first, when we arrived at the J.K. Kennedy  airport, it was full of black people, uncommon, as usually we see only few here or there. At first we also got a black driver. He constantly laughed about things which were said or weren`t said…a true warm southern temperament!
My first attempt to cross a road in New York was little bit awkward (and I needed a second try for it), because: lights are only red and white (which is illogical, because white is so much harder to notice then green) and you had only like 10-15 sec, before turning red, but when it turned red, it was blinking like extra 20(?) secs, wich meant you could still cross.
Same happened with my attempt at paying with coins. They don’t have a big and understandable number written on coins. Instead they have a penny (1 cent), a nickel(5 cents) a dime (10 cents) and a quarter(25 cents).
The budget fast food restaurants were all over the streets in New York. I wanted to try the grilled cheese toast, as it is so popular there, but…got sick afterwards. Also, you were able to get a coffee for only one dollar.
The coffee in America…I had already heard it is bad, but…didn`t expect anything so terrible.  That is definitely not something you can call coffee! That one dollar coffee was completely undrinkable, but rest of the places weren`t enjoyable either. Starbucks – oh so famous and oh so totally overrated!These are rather coffee like milk drinks, even when I ordered a double shot, it wasn`t recognisable. But that was one sure place to get coffee with  almond milk, though quite expensive for a coffee as well. Also Starbucks in New York was a bit better quality than the one in Miami! When going to Miami, I think American airline was with much more comfortable seats, a little bit
wider and covered with leather. I wish it would be like this in long flights, because that long flight was really hard to bear. In Miami, the airport was so huge that we had to take the train, what transwered us to another part of airport – something I experienced for the first time.

It was very strange that there weren`t any regular outdoor cinemas. As it is constantly warm there, it would be perfect. There were only frequent outdoor movie nights.

Going to a food store was an experience on its own. There are so-so many choices! As everything in America, everything came in such large quantities. All the milk bottles were at least 2l. etc .Also from vegan food, when we have a separate rack for that, there was only a rack full of hummuses! Man was I in heaven, when I got brownie or pumpkin pie hummus. Also to say, when ordering at a cafe etc and the dish comes with salad, the salad comes in an extra bowl, which is big enough to be an extra dish! And when I got a filter coffee, they brought the whole pot of coffee to the table!

In Miami there are latin quarters like Little Haiti and Little Havana, created in the 50-s.Little Havana is the place to get good coffee! There are shops, which look like shops from the front but in the back there is a barber or some coffee tasting. Apartments were jam-packed. No lawns or yards were included. There were also many laundry places as apparently the living spaces are too tight to fit a washing machine.

In our apartment, we got to meet cockroaches, fortunately I didn’t have to kill them myself. There are many drunk drivers in Florida and also, when riding to St Petersburg, we sat in traffic, basically in one spot about 2 hours.

In west florida I had also chance to experience some true american waitress service. That was interesting, as I answered to her so modestly and timly – it made her suprise, im I okey?! To mention service isn`t like that in everywhere as there are much multi-culti people, so very variable temperament.

It was interesting to observe black people communicating, I especially got to see that on a cruise. They have such vivid and warm expression!

When going to Finland and one Finnish guy pulled faces at me at the security check, I understood,this is the bye-bye for South and first greetings from grumpy North.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>