| Letter from America |
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April 2005 Arriving at New York And so we arrived at New York after a flight of 6 hours, dealt with immigration formalities and caught the train into the centre of the city. New York is brash, noisy and largely speaks English as a second language. At least, that is the case with people in the service industries. They are difficult to understand, not very polite and do not smile. The second and later generation Americans on the other hand were mainly friendly and helpful. Being with French people who speak little English made the language difficulties more acute and so we ended up organising virtually everything, as the simplest way forward. The buildings are certainly tall and create a very different kind of skyline to what we‘re used to. Not many of them have great architectural merit, the main exception to this being the Chrysler building - an art deco building from the 1930's. Art deco continued to be a theme in most towns, and particularly with the art deco quarter in Miami. There were many hotels and other buildings in down-town Miami which had been conserved and, taken together, looked wonderful. Eating out The portions are enormous if you go to a typical American restaurant, which explains the size of some Americans - two obese Americans walking down the street together can create a traffic jam on the pavement. A sandwich is an entire meal in itself complete with chips and salad as well as a multi-layer sandwich and the obligatory bottle of Ketchup. During most of our stay, whether in New York, Washington or Miami, fortunately we were able to find French and Italian restaurants which were both of good quality and reasonably priced - the rate of exchange was very much in our favour. So unusual was it for the boss of one French restaurant to have French customers, that he invited us all back to the restaurant the following day for lunch at his expense. Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch! The Museums They were wonderful, with collections that were quite astonishing in their breadth and quality. They ranged from MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art) with its eclectic mix of contemporary art to the National Museum at Washington with collections of impressionists, Rembrandts, American painters I had never heard of but which were superb, a temporary Toulouse Lautrec exhibition and so much more. The Opera The production of the Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, New York was quite the best staging I have seen. The director had staged the ‘Lion King' for Broadway, and she certainly new how to fill the stage with action. The singing was excellent although not quite up to the standard of the production we saw at Covent Garden a few years ago. Going Back Maybe some day. |