Pro's & Con's in the States so far

We will of course start with the pro's. The weather is good. Although it rained for a few hours yesterday, it's still far better than your normal Gothenburg or Ballina weather. When the sun is out it gets really warm quickly and the temperature hasn't been below 20 degrees since we got here.

The town of Greenwich is very cute. There are nothing but low buildings and it reminds me a little bit of the suburbs in Melbourne . Both residential houses and commercial buildings (which are also more like houses) are made of wood, red bricks or the two combined. They look so cute with their little porches, neat gardens and wooden fencing.

Along Greenwich Avenue, which is the main strip, there are a lot (!) of nice shops that could make any girl (with a pile of money saved) happy. Ralph Lauren, Saks Fifth Avenue, Longchamps, a huge Apple store, Michael Kors, you name it - it's all there... Dave and I strolled down the Ave yesterday but he's not the best companion when it comes to shopping so I might wait until the teenage girl of the house (Shelby) comes home on Saturday and see if she wants to go for a serious round.

The scenery altogether is lovely. We live in Glenville, which is a very green suburb surrounded by several forests. It has a little village centre with your local deli, wine shop, grocery shop and pizza place. Oh, and drycleaners of course. Everyone takes their clothes to the drycleaners or launderettes and has landscaping companies doing their gardens and driveways. In this house, the gardener comes once a week - on Fridays.

Another big pro of Connecticut/the States is the easy access to the lovely Californian Chardonnays. I love a fat, powerful, tropical fruit and vanilla scented Chardonnay and of those there are a lot here. The first friend I made here was Paul, the owner of the local wine shop. I'm gonna try one Chard a week and he promised that the next time I'm there, we're gonna open a few bottles and have a little Chardonnay-tasting. I'll def be in heaven then! (The pic below is from the night Dave and I got engaged in Port de Sollèr, Mallorca.)

Ok, on to the con's of this country. All I can say is: Oh my God, the poor environment! Poor, poor environment that's gonna be distroyed by this country alone. You see it everywhere. Everything the Americans do is wrong for the environment. And we are in Connecticut, neighbouring the State of New York, this is an educated and rich state which should know better! For example; it's totally OK to leave the engine running when you leave the car to go into the supermarket and come back in 15-20 minutes. (I guess the good thing is that there must be low crime statistics here, since nobody's concerned about leaving their fat car with the key in it.)

Why make ordinary tea or coffee when you can get a machine in which you only have to put in a pod? Everyone has them and a box of 12 tea or coffee pods costs about 9 dollars and the pods are of course all plastic.

I just thought of another pro actually. The bagels and the bagel toaster! It's niiice. A sesame bagel with cream cheese and salmon which you can make in your own home. You don't have to pay dear money for it at The Bagel Factory (which we don't even have in Sweden yet).

I'm sure I can think of more pro's and con's but now I'm on my way down to the village to pay Paul a visit. Tonight Mary wants to eat at the boat club. Mike is the commodore of GBYC, Greenwich Boat and Yacht Club and the members maintain the harbour and club house themselves. In return they get to use it and have big barbecues there. That might actually call for a nice, cool bottle of Chardonnay... :-)

Cherioo!
Alex