Things I forgot I love about America

When we found out we were moving, I listed some of the good things I remembered from the last time we were in the US in this post.

Well, now that we have been here a few weeks, there have been one or two less positive events (let's not mention the DMV or guns in the roof) and a whole lot of things that I used to love, forgot about, and am now enjoying loving them all over again.

Here's a few of these newly remembered bits of awesomeness about the USA.

1. Service and hospitality. Seriously, I'm not a fan of the concept of tipping but it is so nice to actually have staff be nice to you when you go out for a meal. Yes, they're nice even when you have kids.

2. Sushi is so good and so cheap. It is almost always made fresh and you can get so much more variety than in Perth.

3. Banks are nice to you, like super nice. I set up an account yesterday and today the woman who helped me out phoned me up to ask me how I was going!

4. Massive cups of coffee. Even a small coffee over here is large. I tried to be a coffee connoisseur but I have come to the realization that when it comes to coffee, I'm a quantity over quality kind of girl.

5. Super-sized strawberries. I know that there is likely to be some sort of weird growth hormone, irradiation or GMO going on to get strawberries the size of apples and I'm not saying that I support this kind of thing but I did forget how immensely satisfying it is to eat giant strawberries.

6. Bagels. Proper ones. I had a pizza bagel today, yum.

7. Freeways. Compared to Perth, roads around here are serious about getting you where you need to be as fast as possible. There are so many freeways with so many lanes that, as long as you can navigate properly, it is very easy to get to where you need to go.

8. HOV lanes. I wasn't a big user of these in the past because many HOV's required 3 people in the car in Seattle. Because of my permanent 3 person entourage, I can use the HOV lane all day every day. Awesome.

9. Copper River Salmon. I haven't had any yet, and I'm going to have to wait until May next year to enjoy it, but copper river salmon is about as good as it gets.

10. Malls you can spend a day in. During our first mall visit yesterday, I was reunited with so many of the retailers that I had forgotten I loved. Can't wait to do some serious shopping.

11. Cinnabon. I told Declan that when they bring a batch of Cinnabons out of the oven, people run from everywhere to get them while they're hot. I took him to get his first Cinnabon and we were told that the fresh ones were 10 minutes away. Much to my extreme embarrassment, Declan stood at the counter and held on, not moving for 10 minutes lest the running hoards pushed him out of the way. As a result of his persistence, he got the biggest, freshest, yummiest Cinnabon from the oven and the only running and pushing was from Reuben and Ivy.

12. Red Robin. Although your burger choices are limited if you don't eat meat, I can still enjoy bottomless fries and bottomless lemonade. I was very disappointed not to find the deep fried mozzarella sticks on the menu however - but perhaps they have been outlawed due to their extreme unhealthiness.

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