Tea parties and Sarbatoriuman Land

I write on the verge of a bold 24-hour journey back into the middle of the country, but my last few days in the East Coast have been great.

New York was scarily similar to the movies. I had a good time hanging out in the famous NY boroughs of Greenwich, Soho, Whitehall and Chelsea. No, you didn't mis-read. New York has flagrantly plagiarised all it's neighbourhoods from London. They're not even ashamed about it. The only areas that are not named after the UK capital have boring names like "The Upper East Side" or "Little Italy".

I think this is all part of the great symptom of American place-names: imaginative dysfunction. These guys had a whole continent at their disposal and they could have named stuff anything they wanted. What would you or I have done in such a situation? Naturally, we would have spent hours cooking up the most ridiculous things you could think of. New York? What's wrong with Sarbatoriuman Land? But no, the Americans named everything after places that either already exist, which is just outrageous cheating, or after themselves. Look at New York state, for example. In this one state you can visit Hamburg, Ithaca, Geneva, Rome, Amsterdam, Dunkirk, Carthage or Norwich. Did they not realise that those names were already taken? And then there's the city Washington. What would people think if we named our capital "William the Conqueror"? How do they get away with this stuff?

It's the same with street names. You have an infinite number of names to choose from, yet in every city the street names are the same: the roads going one way are numbers (how boring can you get?) and the roads going the other are either numbers too, or they're Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Independence. Or they're the names of the states. It's unbelievable.

Aaaannnnyyway, New York was amazing, but I don't think I'm completely sold. The "alternative" bits were a bit too pretentious, the buildings were just showing off sometimes, and the subway was a bit too run-down to be believable. Still, it would be an incredible place to live, and for this reason I was impressed by the two schools I visited, Hunter and Barnard.

I managed to find a couch with Joe (to whom I am eternally grateful), a classic New Yorker with the proper accent, who lived on Brighton Beach (there it is again!) in Brooklyn, right next to the iconic but really grimy looking theme park and a beautiful stretch of beach that reminded me of sunny Bournemouth. I recognised the area from the movie Requiem for a Dream, which I had seen just a few days before.

Boston is a great city. It's brimming with universities - I've never seen so many crammed in to one town. I was officially looking at Boston University, but I couldn't resist taking a peak at Harvard too. The historic centre was also nice, especially the incredible street-performers, and I gazed nostalgically at the harbour where the cruel, evil Americans wasted all that lovely tea that the caring British had kindly provided for them. I mean seriously, who would throw away decent tea? From India? If they wanted to offend me as a Brit they couldn't have chosen a better way.

My host Dory was awesome - she was a hip-hop DJ or something cool and also studied Japanese stuff. I also stayed with another dude named Cole and his myriad friends who have a billion musical instruments and are all extremely creative. That was cool.

Now for the non-stop express to the mid-west! Hold on to your hat Dr. Jones!