More often than not, when I’m talking to Italians and they tell me they want to travel to the U.S., they all say the same thing: they want to go to New York, Miami… and Niagara Falls. (Huh? Niagara Falls?) They tell me that TV and movies have influenced them; they’ve seen more mention of New York and Miami than any other place.

Yesterday, out for a late night dinner with an Italian friend, at a restaurant with paper tablecloths, I started sketching a map of the U.S. and talking about the regional differences across the country. In trying to communicate the tremendous variation in geography and culture we covered a LOT of topics! (Of course, all from my own point of view…)

Here’s a list of some of the things we talked about. How many can you find noted in the sketch below?

• Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York
• Grand Canyon, Cascade Mountains, Rocky Mountains, Great Lakes, Gulf Coast Marshes
• Pacific Northwest, West Coast, Southwest, South, Midwest, New England,
  East Coast, Florida, border with Canada
• BP Oil spill and threatening Hurricane Alex
• Conservative, liberal, up-tight, traditional, racist
• Rednecks, Ku Klux Klan, cross-burning
• Cities, population centers, farm country, apples, pears, grapes
• The Adobe homes of the Southwest
• Where I went to school in California and Ohio
• My long, one day drive from San Jose to Seattle
• The “boot” of Italy and the cultural divide between north and south
  The cultural divide between northern and southern California