So Many People

One of the most striking differences between living in London and living in Washington is that here, you're living next door to all of humanity -- in all its life stages. In the States, you're much more segregated, always with your tribe of the time. In most places anyway.
In our neighborhood here, in west London, there's everyone pretty much. Suburban families, with kids in strollers up through secondary school. Older people, either couples or singles, living alone. Young people just starting out on their lives sharing flats.
Not to mention from every country. Americans. French. Polish. Italian. Middle Eastern. British, even. Colin Firth even. All right here. All ages of them.
In downtown Washington, where we lived for the last six months we were in the States, we were surrounded by young people. Our neighbors were mostly young adults in their late 20s or early 30s, just starting out on their careers, sharing apartments with others like them.
Washington has become THE place for East Coast kids just out of college to start their careers, since the job situation is better there than many other cities in the U.S. The federal government and all that.
And the neighborhood we were in attracted lots of young people, more and more each year.
It was nice -- lively, noisy, especially after the suburbs. But we felt old there. Didn't really fit in.
Before, for a dozen years while we were raising our boys, we lived in the quiet suburbs of Washington, where lots of other people were doing exactly the same thing as us. Raising kids in the suburbs.
Where the public schools were good. And there was room to play. And it felt safe.
But we outgrew that. Our kids grew up anyway.
New, younger families started to move in.
I like that there's such a mix of people and ages here -- that everyone lives together in the same neighborhood.
That's what American urban planners are trying so hard to achieve these days.
I just wish I had more of a connection to them.

The Color of Cities

Paris, maybe more than any other city, has its color.
It's so distinctive. Such an unique look.
But what color is it exactly?
I've been trying to name it for the past two days.
And I invite you all to weigh in. Since I'm no Paris expert.
It's grey, but then it can be almost the color of a magnolia, or is it sand? Even at times off-white, or even white. But never white-washed, like something in the Mediterranean, god forbid, no.
That's not elegant enough.
And then the buildings are often flat-fronted, six or seven stories high, all with black wrought iron window railings. Not balconies or terraces like in Italy -- not the weather for that -- just faux balconies, really, just the railing outside the window, often with a splash of red geraniums on top.
And then there's the terracotta chimney tops, all lined up on the flat rectangular stone chimneys on every building.
Street after wide street the same in harmonious elegance.
Stunning.
And so unique.
Rome has a color too -- and I've struggled trying to name that one. Please help me there as well.
Rome's a burnt sienna, with a bit of pumpkin, some faint orange maybe, with some brown. More earth-colored; less austere.
More faded, though, too. Needs a paint job.
Paris doesn't need a paint job.
London's easy -- it's the color of brick, row upon row of little brick houses in tidy little brick streets. Endless little brick streets with rectangular signs with big black round lettering.
Do the big cities in America have a color too?
I'm not sure.
What color is New York -- in my view, America's most glorious city?
Is it a color?