I just came back from a three week road trip from Toronto to California and back. My impressions on America could go on for pages and pages but I don't feel like writing that much and you don't feel like reading that much so I'll do the cliff notes version instead.
East coast > West coast. I was pretty disappointed with California but Chicago is now one of my all-time favourite cities. Driving back eastwards as soon as we hit St. Louis everything felt right again. I don't know what it is. A combination of the flora and fauna as well as the architecture style just feels like home to me. Also, the road signs make way more sense on the east coast.
America is so god-damned (I love the way you say god damn) big. We were mostly hopping through National Parks (National Park week is a fantastic thing) and the amount of changes you can go through in just a couple of days is huge. One day it was snowing in Yellowstone, the next you're in the badlands of Utah, suddenly it's Death Valley and then things are temperate again by the coast. On the topic of national parks, the Grand Canyon in Arizona sucks. However, the Grand Canyon in Yellowstone is pretty much one of the most amazing pieces of landscape I've ever seen.
Gas is incredibly cheap. It's all relative but coming from Canada, gas prices in the states are like going back in time. My cousin from England also on the trip was especially surprised since gas in England is closer to $8 a gallon.
McDonald's and their free WiFi made life so much easier than it otherwise would have been. Also, McDonald's is cheap. It's cheap here in Canada as well but it's a whole new level in the states. No wonder people are so big.
I went to see The Avengers in San Francisco as a break from travelling. It was one of the most awesome movie experiences of my life. People were cheering and laughing and screaming. I've never seen anything like it. When something funny happens, people actually laugh for 5-10 second stretches and when a character did something badass, the whole cinema cheered. I don't know if this is representative of the movie going experience in America or not but I've certainly never seen anything like it.
Finally, Americans are nice. People said hi to me all the time and struck up conversation. I'm somewhat used to this but the Briton I was with took a while getting used to it since the level of interaction with strangers we had in one day was more than he would experience in a year.
