Home for the Holidays

I'm home for the holidays. While New York doesn't feel like a strange or foreign place, a couple of things have caught my eye after being away for so long:

Elevators here are really, really big.

There are more SUVs, and they are bigger, than I remembered from before. (This, even after the year's oil shocks.)

New York streets are wide, ugly and noisy. Parisian drivers and traffic are about as bad as New York's, but they don't honk their horns the way New Yorkers do. There is also little to no audio pollution of public spaces from Christmas carols there.

I love the extended shopping hours of most stores here.

I didn't realize how used to kissing on both cheeks I had become until everyone at the party I went to last night got confused when I tried it.

I really, really missed reading the New York Times on paper. But it looks quite small in comparison to some of the European papers I've been reading this fall.

And it's bloody cold here. But at least the buildings are overheated.

This is probably my last post till I get back to Paris, so please check back after Jan. 7. Have a great holiday yourself, wherever you are.