I suppose, in some respects, travelling across the great big USA could seem redundant; if you've seen one part, you've seen it all? Hardly. Granted, for such a massive country, things are surprisingly homogenous; but still, each region I've visited seems different than the others. And not like the big differences between Canadian provinces. No, clumps of states make up the regions of the US. New England, of course, is the northeast part. And I did a short little trip through there with a nice rental car, a good friend, and went to meet up with another fine friend up in Boston.

Leaving New York, it's amazing how brash and ugly everything is; the city is everything but pretty, although I suppose the beauty is in the decay. The harsh, industrial age bricks, stained with black from years of acid rain, are the wonderful scenery you can look forward to on your way north from the city, through Yonkers I think, from the Newark airport. We bypassed Manhattan in the car, as any sane person would, although soon it dawned on me that if we stuck strictly to the big American freeway there would be little scenery aside from a McDonald's every ten miles and the seemingly always under construction roads.

Something happened, though, as we drove through connecticut and then into Rhode Island, and turned off of the freeway to take the winding highway along the ocean(even though the highway is still very far away from the ocean) - the ugliness of urban New York disappeared, and pleasant wooden houses dotted the side of the quiet road. It reminded me of New Brunswick, except of course that in Maritime Canada the architecture is not the exact archetype you see of New England that is promoted in movies and books and pictures. Rhode Island is - straight out of a television show, or as lonely planet calls the touristic phenomenon of visiting the US, "The shock of the familiar".

Also - roundabouts in New England. Baffling, although making sense, since it is "new" England, and surprisingly not as chaotic as I had suspected. Of course, roundabouts can be found all over the eastern states, but there just seems to be far more of them in this region. They're not particularly helpful for someone who is used to the sparse roads of the west, and on our first day of the journey we managed to get lost in a nice little town called Westerly.

I did the standard lost tourist thing and wandered into the gas station, where a rather tired looking young woman was sitting behind the counter. I asked her how to get to Newport, knowing full well it was the big tourist town around here, in Rhode Island. She shouted back directions. It caught me off guard, that I would be standing less than a metre in front of her, but she still found the urge to speak as though I was on the other side of town.

Slowly, though, we found our way along the quiet highway and into Newport. It did not look like much in the dark, but we had a fine dinner at a seafood restaurant. It struck me, as well, that everyone I had seen since leaving New York was white. Not only is Manhattan a cultural crossroads, but it also catches me offguard since I live in Richmond, British Columbia - the most Asian bit of North America. You can't walk outside without at least hearing one east Asian language, if not several. But here, it's entirely WASP - White Anglo Saxon Protestant. College boys straight out of the Dead Poets Society and Goodwill Hunting, wandering in groups along the sidewalk.

We crashed at a big mo-tel on the edge of town, inexpensive and massive, just like the meals. I also noticed at our meal that the portions seemed to be unreasonably large. Easily larger than European portions, but even Canadian portions? I don't ever recall getting this much food at once at a restaurant back home. It's the little things that you notice the most, perhaps, and there are plenty of little things I'm noticing on this trip. It's amazing that I can still get a culture shock out of the Americans, even though I've been their neighbour all my life.



Onto Plymouth, and Cape Cod



Back