Today is Melbourne Cup day, Australia's equivalent of Ascot in London, or the Kentucky Derby in the US. Victoria has a public holiday, which allows us all to dress up in our spring racing festival finery, drink lots of warm bubbly, and blindly bet on horses we know nothing about, save for their loud racing colours and their quirky names. (This year's line-up includes Voila Ici, Maluckyday, and Zabeelionaire, which is going to be hard to say as he comes down the straight.)
The favourite is an American-bred, French-trained thoroughbred racehorse called Americain. Such a fantastic name, isn't it? Americain. And rather fitting really, considering much of the world seems to be concentrating on a certain Presidential election taking place tomorrow.
I don't know about you lovely Library readers, but we're very much into into politics in our family. Admittedly, I wasn't for many years. I shied away from it all after a bad experience interviewing a certain former Australian prime minister several years ago. But when your partner works in government and politics, it tends to crop up, like conversational weeds, over the dinner table. That's when the discussions go something like this:
HIM: "So honey... Have you see the latest news about Mitt Romney today?" (A certain someone is a Republican, but let's not mention names here.)
ME: "No. Do you mean the 'Binder full of women' comment he blurted out the other day?"
HIM: "That was taken out of context. And besides, the latest polls put Romney ahead by a margin."
ME: "Not if the women of America have their vote."
As you can see, we're a couple of old romantics.
One thing we do agree upon however, is that we both have a great deal of regard for the great, patriotic US of A. America is a vastly underrated country. So many of us jet off to Paris, London or Vietnam, but if you saw the Grand Canyon, Maine in summer, the mountains of Montana, Connecticut in Fall or Savannah anytime of the year you'd understand why Americans love their country. And why many of them don't want to travel. They don't need to. They have a small world to explore right in their own backyard.
And so I thought, seeing as it's the eve of the presidential election in the US, that I'd post some pix of some of our favourite American places. What about you? Do you have any destinations in the States that you're fond of?
PS My money's on Americain.
{All images by me. Copyright and all that. But they're not that good, so I don't expect anybody to repost them!}
Cape Cod, Massachussets.
One of America's most beautiful summer getaway places.
Maine, in New England.
One of the most spectaculars places during Autumn / Fall. (Which is now.)
Sag Harbor and Shelter Island, off the coast of Long Island.
Where the scenery looks like a Ralph Lauren advertisement.
Miami and the Florida Keys.
Occasionally kitsch. Mostly fantastic.
I drew Americain in the sweep...didn't even place dammit! My husband LOVES politics too (although does not work even remotely in it). It's really dull. When we were on our Honeymoon in the Maldives, there were no TV's in the little desert island style villa that I had booked. He was beside himself - it was the run up to the 2000 election. As a consequence he spent much of our honeymoon in the islands "Media Room" watching CNN coverage of every last boring detail. It was very romantic. He is beside himself with joy that he is actually in NY while the election is on this time around. xx
ReplyDeleteThis made me chuckle. In our house, the usual topic of meal conversation is politics, politics, politics, whether it's breakfast, lunch or dinner!
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a family which was split down the middle politically, so robust political arguments/discussions were just a daily thing. Who needs to talk about the weather when a debate can be had over the salad instead?
The US race does seem too close to call - or perhaps that is just the Australian perspective. 6 months ago I thought Obama was a certain, but now I'm not so sure. xx
ps - nice to see an aussie horse won though!