...a few notes..

1)..18 years ago I made a trip into Canada JUST to buy some beer with flavor..and still appreciate some very nice brews from Canada, now, fortunately, you can get good beer in most places here. (though, in many small towns, you are still limited to the methelated swill that passes for lager..i.e.Budweiser)..Micro & mini breweries in the USA are competing very well...

2)..I can make a FINE cup of tea...ceramic pot, boiling water, LOOSE tea, proper steeping etc...but I do NOT pollute it with milk until there is no tea flavor left!

3) The USA is too large for any stereotypes to be relevant. As Kendall can tell you, living in Maine is TOTALLY different than living in Texas, or Kansas, or Alabama, or New Jersey....and NOTHING is like living in California!....there are states that I simply could NOT live in, whereas I could easily live in (most) of Canada, Scotland, Australia, Belgium..(oh, the BEER!..and chocolate too).

4) Peter T's experience with tour groups echos and enlarges on my WAY earlier post back up ^ there. Organized tour groups often are made up of affluent idiots who have NO idea how to behave. I once saw a cartoon of an American tourist in Mexico, standing in front of a poor wide-eyed vendor in an open-air market, screaming...."Cheeze Doodles, Cheeze Doodles!! Don't you people understand anything?" Unfortunately, THAT's what gets remembered.

(My wife relates a story of being in England, at a restaurant, and asking for a glass of water, and being ostentatiously misunderstood for long minutes until the waitress finally asked disdainfully, "Oh..do you mean 'wawtuh'?")....*grin*