US Travel – 3 Things That Rock for Visitors
Last week, I wrote about some of the strange things I noticed when traveling in the US. Today, it’s time to think about some of the great things that I associate with US travel. They are choice, convenience and connectivity.
1. Choice
Having spent most of my adult life in the UK, I’m no stranger to choice on the shelves, but in my opinion the product range in the US knocks this out of the park. On one of my early trips to New York, I visited Macys and asked where I could find jeans. The shop assistant said something like: “You’ll find them on floors 1 and 5 in this building, and floors 3 and 7 in our other building.” That’s a prime example of what I mean. Pick any item you want and there will be dozens of brands with dozens more options within each brand. For those who are not used to it, the choice can be overwhelming!
2. Convenience
I think of the US as a place where convenience is unparalleled. If you’re American you might take this for granted but for the rest of us a world where free refills appear magically (even if it’s bad for the waistline), there are plenty of places to sit and relax while shopping, you don’t have to touch a tap or a flush handle in the bathroom and you can turn right on a red light if nothing is coming are just small signs of what it’s like to live in a place where everything is convenient. The icing on the cake is that people generally go out of their way to be helpful, which can come as a shock when you’re used to grunts at best and ignorance at worst from service staff. Our apartment hotel included a service where they’d stock your fridge for you from the local supermarket. We didn’t use it, but (although it probably does exist), I’ve never been offered that in a British hotel.
3. Connectivity
On every trip to the US, I notice more and more people with smartphones. Many Americans take constant connectivity for granted. I can’t deny that it’s useful to be able to go online on your phone to find the nearest Dunkin Donuts and then load up a map that tells you how to get there. It’s great to be able to find out if you’re going to pass another gas station before you reach your destination and it’s excellent to be able to logon to the hotel’s Wi-Fi system without needing to input myriad passwords or buy tokens. For me, this was one of the aspects of our recent trip which worked best.
(Photo: 1hr photo)
