Travel Blog

Leave South Florida to almost any part of the country and you're invariably struck by how nice people are. Southerners are famous for their warmth, mid-Westerners for their openness. But the good-natured people of the mid-Atlantic states don't get the attention they deserve.

Yesterday I took the bus into New York. The driver on the way in was quiet (it was 8 am) but the driver coming back announced, as soon as we pulled out of our berth at Port Authority: "First stop Circus, Circus, then Bellagio, then Caesar's Palace."

Around Clinton he took the microphone again. "Stop that," he said, in what sounded like a scolding tone until he added. "It's too early to yawn. Yawning's contagious. You start yawning and soon your bus driver will start yawning. And a yawning bus driver is not encouraging."

About fifteen minutes later he announced: "Next stop - Warren County's largest shopping mall. Whoppee! The Phillipsburg Mall."

I grabbed my bookbag and headed down the aisle. "Win some money at the casinos," the driver said.

And the other morning buying gas - New Jersey is one of the last states that doesn't allow self-service (in consideration, I believe, of my mom) - a bundled attendant with a graying mustache handed me my change through the slit in the window saying, "Here ya go slugger."