Also don’t forget to tip in bars. That is also another very important place to tip. General rule is, if paying for each beer/drink at once, a dollar is usually fine. If you’re buying rounds / leaving a tab open, then you can save money by only tipping 15 percent at the end. Yeah, I don’t know what it’s like in oz, but Americans open tabs a lot in bars. Almost everyone allows you to do this.
Really the most important place to tip is in a restaurant from 15 to 20 percent. This is if you sit down and have someone bring you food. If you’re in a McDonalds or any other kind of place where you order and they hand you your food, then there’s no need to tip. If you slip up somewhere else then it’s not such a huge faux pas. You are supposed to tip cabbies, but it’s not as universally frowned upon as not tipping in a restaurant.
Also don’t be fooled by the various “tip jars” you’ll see floating around. There’s one at my local convenience store. I have no idea why I’m supposed to tip there. But there’s a lot of people going around with Tip Jars that really don’t need them. If you have people handling bags then tip them too. But that’s usually more likely with your upscale type hotels.
Also, i’m guessing you’re going to be going to a diner at some point. You definitely should to get a good American breakfast. We, like the English (and probably you aussies too) take our breakfast very seriously in this country, and have many breakfast options. The ideal (in my opinion) is pancakes or waffles and two eggs and bacon or sausage. That’s a lot of food.
Heard something here the other day about some woman who didn’t know how to order breakfast. We have terminology for ordering eggs here.
scrambled = scrambled.
over easy = lightly cooked on top (yoke barely cooked)
over medium = slightly more cooked yolk
over hard = completely cooked yolk.
sunny-side up = i think this means that the egg is never even flipped, thus completely uncooked yolk. When you bust out these terms and people are going to be impressed!
I used to order “steak and eggs” at waffle house so you have to tell how you want the steak and eggs done with different terminology. Lastly, at every diner-type place I’ve been, they serve you with a waitress, and then when the check arrives, you have to walk to the register to pay. It’s weird, but it’s like this everywhere as far as I know. If you see a cash register displayed prominently by the bar then that’s what is up. You still need to leave a normal tip though.
Anyway, the good thing is you have friends in various places to help you figure things out. I know very little about LA, so I would offer more. There’s loads of stuff to do in NYC though. The best thing to do is buy a book and personally research the things you’re interested in because you could probably spend your entire time just doing a small subset of things. There’s the obvious things but I would add that the Statue of Liberty isn’t really worth it. Ground Zero is literally a giant construction site now (I think the monument is gone now), so it’s not much worth seeing. There’s typical NY style pizza you can get everywhere and then you have the more Italian like pizza at places like Grimaldis which are freaking amazing. I guess that’s about it really.
