Thumbs Up for the U.S.A.

Some French tourists visit America and signal approval, mostly

Once upon a time, Americanus touristus roamed the world freely, leaving its green-paper tracks everywhere, while its own habitat remained a preserve too costly for the world's other species to visit. Today, with their currencies stronger in relationship to the dollar, more and more foreigners are taking the grand tour of the U.S. In 1960, only some 800,000 came to visit; in 1979, nearly 6.5 million visitors are expected. TIME Contributor Jane O'Reilly accompanied a group of French tourists and wrote this account of the journey:

They came-- 19 people from all over France and their tour leader Franc,oise Simonin, 30 -- because, simply, this is the U.S.: a part of their cultural consciousness, a place they felt they already knew well through movies, television and popular music. Well-traveled but speaking little English, the group had paid 10,400 francs each ($2,400) to tour all the sights the French insist on seeing: New York City, Niagara Falls, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Disney World in Orlando, and Washington, D.C.

Fourteen days and 13 plane trips later, they would pronounce their experiences "C,avaut le voyage"-- It's worth the trip. Wearing Western string ties, tractor caps, Grand Canyon sweat shirts, Navajo necklaces and Mickey Mouse T shirts, they would flourish a Gallic gesture: thumbs up for the U.S.

New York: Excitement is tinged by anxiety on the bus from J.F.K. International Airport into Manhattan. The guide warns them that tips are not included on the bill in the U.S. and cautions against going to Central Park at night. Sunday morning the group boards the first of its many private buses and heads for the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Bewildered but obliging, the visitors from the land that created Gothic cathedrals troop up the aisle, assured that this is the biggest Gothic cathedral in the world.

Cutting across 125th Street for the de rigueur sight of Harlem, the elderly, enthusiastic bus guide warns them mysteriously not to take pictures from the window. "Is Harlem better or worse than you expected?" he asks. "Better!" Later the visitors disperse to collect impressions of Manhattan on their own. Marc Horber, a kitchenware manufacturers' representative from Nancy, and his son Eric, 17, walk through Chinatown and Little Italy. Father finds the city "a grand has-been," but to his son, "It is very different from France, everyone living in his own territory, very dirty, but full of life."

Georges Bonnemaison, a sportswriter and jazz critic for the Toulouse paper Depeche du Midi, and his wife Regine venture into Central Park. Apparently expecting the tranquillity of Paris' Luxembourg Gardens, they confront instead bongo drums, tape decks, roller skaters, family picnics and baseball games. "Trap decontracte," says Mme. Bonnemaison, disgusted. Too relaxed. "Everyone does just what he wants!" New York is an interesting place to visit, but although they are amazed to find people actually living there, obviously it is impossible. Mixed reviews, thumbs waggle.

Niagara Falls: Monday morning. "The falls are an idee fixe with the French," explains Tour Leader Simonin, who speaks English. But the falls cannot compete with the roar of the souvenir area. Lost among the neon pillows and vulgar posters, Jeannine Saunier, a chemistry teacher, and her husband Claude, director of a Hoechst chemical factory in Cuise-la-Motte, sigh: "Always so ugly, just as in France." All agree: "Too commercial. A big disappointment." Thumbs down.

San Francisco: Arriving Tuesday evening, the weather cold and wet, the French fall in love. Wednesday's bus tour moves from delight to delight: Sausalito, Muir Woods, the bridges. Michele Soor, a schoolteacher, and her husband Jacques, an accountant, from outside Paris, approve: "The coast, the views, the style of life, of construction, the animation. We will come back." Definitely, thumbs up.

Los Angeles: Thursday morning's bus tour is a desastre. The guide points out a parking lot with special sections for employees and employers. The sociology of Hollywood parking lots is perhaps a subtlety of American life only Joan Didion could properly analyze. Without such insight, the French are entirely perplexed, find Los Angeles "flat" and "uninteresting" Only the Isolas, whose 16-year-old daughter is staying with a family in the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles and Bordeaux are twinned cities --jumelles-- and arrange such friendly exchanges) are sorry to leave at 4 a.m. for the Grand Canyon. Thumbs down for L.A.

Grand Canyon: The travelers arrive in a Scenic Airlines' plane that is equipped with French, English, German and Japanese tapes. The canyon, under rare clouds, is a phantom of itself, but even so, it is wondrous.

At the El Tovar Hotel, a 1905 rustic masterpiece, mem bers of the group wander through the corridors, searching for their rooms -- yet another hotel without a French-speaking person on the staff. Although 20% of the visitors are now foreign, Amfac Inc., which runs the Grand Canyon National Park Lodges, has put up only some signs in Japanese. Still, thumbs up.

Las Vegas: Entering the hotel lobby is like being inside a pinball machine. All gasp at an enormously fat woman, in stretch pants and halter, playing an equally enormous slot machine. "American women seem to pay no attention to their appearance," worries Mme. Sau nier. "Perhaps they don't care because no one looks at each other."

Only extreme astonishment provokes such comments. Twenty-five years ago, Americans boisterously complained through Europe, but this French group remains polite, even blase, avoiding giving offense, even to each other.

Americans wear name tags and take down addresses for the Christmas card list. But the French, by the end of the trip, do not even know the names of all the others in the group.

In Las Vegas, they patiently wait three hours for their rooms, stoically eat soggy, hot roast beef sandwiches, hesitantly try to understand the casinos and play roulette discreetly. Bonnie Johnson, a cashier at the Marina Hotel casino, supplies "gaming guides" in English. M. Saunier has been puzzling out the messages Americans wear. IN TRAINING TO SERVE YOU BETTER announces a waitress's tag.

An elevator placard proclaims MENU ITEMS THAT COVER THE ENTIRE SPECTRUM OF FOOD ENJOYMENT. He sighs: "It is the same in France, debasement of the language, the fault of T.V."

Still polite, the French stand in line with nearly 500 other people holding reserved places for the Flamingo Hilton's dinner show. The show is a surprise: a chorus of seminude women dressed primarily in false eyelashes and feathers--on skates. "But well done" is the tolerant judgment. As an experience to be checked off life's list, thumbs up for Las Vegas.

New Orleans: Great excitement. Everyone expects to hear much French. A two-hour wait for the bus at the airport is forgotten in the Vieux Carre. The Monteleone Hotel concierge speaks French (a first). M. Bonnemaison steers the group to Preservation Hall, for these people a shrine, not an "attraction." Jazz is "the music that went around the world."

Monday morning, the guide, speaking French, directs them to a Lake Forest shopping center ("C'est enorme") for tennis racquets, blue jeans and--always, everywhere--records: pop, jazz, classical.

But they have not yet heard enough French, in New Orleans or elsewhere. Because no one seems to speak their language, they conclude no one likes the French. The occasional contacts with the natives have been discouraging--Americans seem to think the French are speaking Spanish. "Frankly, honey, I can't tell the difference," says one woman to them.

Still, thumbs up for New Orleans.

Orlando: At Kennedy Space Center, no one speaks French "at the moment," but the bus has a French tape, and the message inside the simulated Apollo launch is unmistakable--rockets and the American flag. A supermarket turns out to be "just like in France," they say. Mme. Saunier muses: "I am astonished by how little advanced American women are." The men laugh and refer to Rosalynn Carter, "who runs the country now."

At Disney World, everyone has exactly the wonderful time he expected.

Mme. Isola admires the arrangements for children--diaper-changing tables, and strollers--but wonders, "Why don't Americans like dogs? They are not allowed in restaurants." They also wonder at what appears to be the rigidity of American amusement park life. "Everybody slide ALL the way down," urges the young attendant to those sitting in the middle of the benches at the Country Bear Jamboree show. Spirits rebelling, the French refuse to move down. "This regulation could not exist in France," they insist.

Another bus to another airport. "But where do people live?" they ask. The question of where and how people live must wait for another, less encapsulated trip.

Orlando rates thumbs up.

Washington, D.C.: Friday morning, only a three-hour bus tour before catching another plane to New York for the flight home. The Capitol is astonishing, unexpected, so like Paris. They are not very clear on the differences between the White House and the Capitol, but they admire Nixon--a French taste. At the Kennedy grave, M. Rousseau says: "We are very moved. Many of us cried when he died." On the Mall, they say: "Ah yes, we know this very well, from television during the demonstrations."

Touched by Washington, exhausted and "full up" from the trip they had chosen "in order to get a little taste of everything," they are satisfied with what they admit has been "an artificial impression." They have no greater sense of the people, the problems, even the landscape of the U.S. But they have seen exactly what they came to see: the myths.

There is one very big surprise. Americans, black and white, contrary to everything the French believed, live and work together harmoniously.

And they have one last question: Why did the soap in the hotels float?

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