First Impressions of America

After trying desperately hard to go to bed at local time to get my body in sync as quickly as possible, and failing by 6pm I find myself awake at 6:30am trying to fill the time so thought I would write about my first impressions on the USofA.

To be honest it is frighteningly like I expected, in fact I’m surprise by how unsurprised I am. Having said that there are a couple of things that I wasn’t excepting, the food is amazing and it is ten times as intense as the “American” culture we have in the UK.

I’ve only been to one restaurant and so can hardly form a conclusive opinion on the food but I have a feeling that it was at least half representative. The menu was pretty much entirely grilled meat but my god is it good grilled meat. I had the ribs and Hannah had the steak and I think I can say it was easily the best steak and ribs we have ever had, and this was just from a generic commercial estate restaurant, nothing fancy and certainly not expensive.

The decor was staged, mass produced and I imagine exactly like any of their other branches. But it was decent quality, the wine rack for example was made from real horse shoes, the cowboy hats where real cowboy hats. It didn’t feel like that cheap plastic theme park type of fake that I thought it would, and how those sort of restaurants feel in the UK. Maybe it feels less fake because fake is real here, in UK that kind of thing still feels a little out of place, but here it is right at home.

Obviously there are massive differences in British and American culture, but I am starting to get the feeling that even the bits that cross over are half arsed in the UK. UK is like America but everything is smaller and with less enthusiasm, I don’t think one way is better than the other but it certainly makes America more interesting than I though it would be.