The Big Crapple - New York, NY

It seems as though every airport in America was designed with the sole purpose of making you want to turn around and get the fuck out again. They all have something of a timeless misery to them that forces you to question how America came to ascend such a prominent position on the world stage.

British airports are by no means architectural treasures but at least they have a semblance of character. Newark Liberty was a particularly faithful totem to America's panache for mind rottingly awful attempts at infrastructure. It reminded me of Reykjavik, a city famously designed by someone with a lobotomy.

Its dreariness doesn't just stop at the airport. The bus that takes you from Newark to Manhattan looked like it had been donated as a leftover prop from Con Air. This was confirmed by the words 'BROKEN!' carved, presumably with a shiv, into the plastic luggage holder. The exclamation mark was a particularly dainty touch, I thought.

The bus journey to New York also bestows some delightful views of Newark itself, which very much feels like a place where aspirations go to die. Newark, in case you were wondering, is America's third oldest city after New York and Boston. It sits about 5 miles west of its older brother and was formerly the car jacking capital of America. (It's also, incidentally, the headquarters of Audible Audiobooks)

Its one saving visual grace is that it's presided over by the New York skyline. A cobalt blue haze of towering monoliths screaming across the horizon. It boggles the mind to think of the millions of people who have laid eyes upon this sight for the first time and the varying set of emotions it has produced for them.

You would be hard pressed to think of another skyline that has elicited so much hope, wonder, terror, joy, relief, anger, and in such equal measures. One can't help but be completely enthralled by it.

The journey gave me a moment to think about whether or not there's any point to writing a travel journal at all here. I'm not exactly reinventing the wheel by doing a road trip down the US East Coast, so why bother?

The journals for Colombia and Iran had something of a connecting narrative. Both were countries that most people perceived as dangerous and the narrative was designed to persuade them to let go of these prejudices. (Iceland is the exception. I just wrote that because everyone and their cat seems to want to visit it)

A quick moment of reflection dictated that America actually fits this narrative ark quite nicely. In 2015 thirty six people were, accidentally or intentionally, shot dead here every single day. That's over five times more than Iran and Colombia combined. In truth, you should be far more scared about being in the US than just about any country. Especially as this trip will go through the most gun crazy states around.

I sort of fell in love with the lift's light at my sis's place

So I suppose the question is, does America also conform to all of its stereotypes (and will I get shot?) It's such well trodden ground here that we really know all there is to know surely? Either way, I hope this will serve as a useful guide to any reader and hopefully as a light diversion from your every day hustle and bustle.

As we drove into the city, I sat and marveled at my surroundings. I never cease to be amazed by American automobiles. They seem to perfectly embody the very essence of the country. Namely, the ability to take any basic utility and then square root all of its most salient qualities.

Never entirely satisfied, those super sized qualities are then blended with others to create an infinite Frankenstein of consumables. For breakfast I had a 'chocolate nutella croissant swirl'. An object so rich in sugar that even half of it would make you go instantly blind from diabetes. It was devilishly decadent.

In stark contrast, your average Brit would swoon over a slice of dry, tasteless red velvet sponge from the local tea shop. In an attempt to not appear overindulgent they would almost certainly offer most of it to perfect strangers, or simply leave most of it untouched.

New York feels very much the epitome of this indulgent mentality. You can find pretty much anything here and it will be delivered to you in 30 minutes or less. Be that a live ladybug farm, tampons, a sushi burrito, sex toys, or a lubed up Myanmese midget (these are all true by the way).

Despite all the creature comforts, New York is still an inescapably brutal city. From the metal skirting on all the sidewalks to the plumes steam that vomit forth from its bowels, it's very much a hard boiled place. No surprise then, that the term 'Rat Race' was born from its streets.

London is by no means Cake Walk but it does feel much more forgiving then this place. Failure here metes out a kind of suffering that Europeans simply couldn't stomach. Opportunities at redemption are also very thin on the ground.

My sister's street (Charles St) in the West Village

It's a hard city to love. I quickly came to this conclusion whilst sweating liberally in the baking Midtown heat, hoping to find someone kind enough to sell me a sim card.

I think the problem with a city like this is the weight of expectation placed on it can often lead to disappointment. Stumbling listlessly around streets all but enveloped by swarms of pedestrians, I could so easily see why people didn't take to this place.

Whilst New York can't be blamed for the weather, they have managed to get in my bad books for a number of other reasons. First and foremost, you basically can't smoke anywhere. While I'm all for the ban on indoor smoking, banning it in every park and outdoor seating area seems a little heavy handed. Even roof terraces are smoke free, which sort of defeats the point of being on one.

And when you do decide to throw caution to the wind and light up in a park, you'll not have more than three seconds before some busybody jogs up to you and politely reminds you that you are always about as close to a rat as you are to a pernicious New Yorker.

I really wished that I loved New York more but it was doing the best to bother me. Unable to cope with the heat in the streets, I desperately hunted for cooling breezes on a three and a half hour stroll from the West to the East Village along the Hudson river. It probably only burnt off half of my chocolate nutella croissant swirl.

This girl was bellowing Chinese from the book she was reading. It was rather wonderful.

On the way, stopped by the 9/11 memorial and was somewhat overwhelmed by the sight of it. I remembered having dinner at the top of the World Trade Centre as a child and simply couldn't fathom the sheer horror and devastation that happened here 15 years ago.

I refreshed myself on the statistics of that day and it only reinforced the inability for one mind to contextualise such a tragedy. 2,753 dead from 115 different nations. 1,609 of them left a spouse or partner behind. 3,051 children lost a parent. 1.8 million tons of debris. 440,000 New Yorkers suffering from post traumatic stress. The list goes on and on.

It's these statistics that go some way to explaining why it only took 28 days for America to begin an ill fated war on terror. It was very much a knee jerk from a dagger right to the heart of America and the repercussions will be felt for generations. I left with something of a heavy heart and searched for more mobile air by the Hudson.

Later that evening I went for drinks with a rather charming girl that I had shared an Uber Pool with earlier in the day. Although it was not the case in this instance, New York girls by and large sound like they've just hit their head on something very hard. Which is a shame really, as they seem to divert enormous amounts of energy into their appearances with rather satisfactory results.

I decided the best environment to test this was to go for a morning run along the Hudson. It confirmed my suspicions that girls from New York are best appreciated when they are all but mute.

Despite my negative early sentiments, New York certainly does do some things quite well. After the first few summers here the early settlers of this city must have sat down and said 'we really fucking need to do something about this heat'. A few generations later and now air conditioning has been installed just about everywhere it can be, even on the metro (London please take note).

As a result my pottering about the city has been punctuated by frequent darts into shops that offer welcome bouts of relief. Unfortunately that leads me to another gripe about the US. It's nigh on impossible to escape being bothered by assistants in shops here.

Conversations will generally go along these lines.

"Hi sir, is there anything I can help with you today?" A pained grin plastered across their face.
"No thank you. I'm just browsing." Job done, surely.

I'll then wander somewhat aimlessly and pretend to inspect whatever items are on offer while I quietly bathe in their cold air.
"That colour really suits your eyes, would you like to try it on?"
"Oh, no thanks. I'm really just looking around." Often shooting an expression that says 'can you not see that I'm about to die of heat stroke'.
They then allow a brief pause before resuming the onslaught.

"We've just discounted those as they're last season."
Another pause while I try to compose myself and prevent an accidental strangling.
"Just browsing thanks. I'll let you know." Accompanied by my most ebullient smile.

Often another colleague will jump in and try a pincer movement.
"Oh, my friend has a pair of these and he LOVES them. You'd look so great in these."

It would be fine if the item in question were not blatantly awful and not worth selling to a blind person. At this point I basically give up and forced to concede defeat. This happens just about any time I duck into a shop and I believe it's the same all over the country. It's the price of freedom I suppose.

I'm not sure if this is worse than the UK's approach. Most shopkeepers back home act as though they would rather get mauled by a bear than even feign a willingness to have you buy to their wares.

Aside from the air con, New Yorkers also have jaywalking down to an art form, which is something I very much approve of. Any opportunity to cross a road is seized with a kind of frenzied gusto that endlessly keeps you on your toes. Road crossings and signs are more a subtle suggestion than prescription here.

Another thing that they managed to get very right is the grid system. A system that I seem unfailingly excellent at getting wrong. One attempt at getting to the High line park on 12th street saw me emerge at Penn Station. That's 11 blocks away. Very much in the 'not even fucking close' category.

During my 11 block ordeal I stopped in a church hard and saw a group of volunteers giving homeless people's pets free medicals and vaccines. There seemed to be something of a cruel irony that the owners were refused a similar service. They just looked on with a expression that sat somewhere between bewilderment and exasperation.

Free health checks for dogs belonging to the homeless

New York had begun to grow on me by my third day here. For every example of grinding poverty and injustice there seemed to be a counterbalancing moment of kindness and generosity. Although the homeless still seem to get a bum deal most of the time.

America seems particularly adept at churning out a brand of insane homeless person unmatched by any other country in the world. During a walk through a park in the East Village I saw someone masturbating and smoking crack simultaneously. Quite a feat.

I'd been told by long-term New Yorkers that the homelessness and panhandling in the city used to be so bad that people would decamp to Calcutta in order to find respite. Apparently now it's infinitely better. I could only half agree.

New York is, and always has been, a city of extremes. An unknowable, ever changing beast of a place that grinds people down if they don't give her a wide berth. No one I met here wanted to stay more than a few years. It was, for nearly everyone, a place that one had to endure for a time and then leave. "Why don't people stay here?" I asked Mary Lou, my Uber friend.
"Because you would go insane."
I could only agree.

I even managed to fall for the metro (a little). Such easy light to shoot in.

There were, therefore a few caveats that one had to accept before you could let New York into your heart. Firstly, Midtown is full knobs/tourists and a hellhole that must be avoided at all costs. Secondly, you need to have an escape route, or forever be damned. Finally, you shouldn't keep track the cost of living here. That will also send you into a deep and prolonged depression.

On my final day in the city I caught up with some old friends over a bottomless brunch. New York's answer to the age old problem of the hangover is that you diligently line up at restaurants around the city and at 11am you pay around $30 and get trashed again with a rich, heavy (often Mexican) meal. There's nothing quite like a Lobster Benedict and 8 margaritas to really shake the cobwebs out.

In something of a stupor, the four of us decided to drive to Harlem. One of our group, Max Toomey was a bright young polymath studying journalism at Columbia and had lived in Harlem for the last year. We had met a few years back in Burma where he had been given the role of EU political corrospondant at the tender age of 23.

Harlem has been up and coming for some 25 years and on first inspection it seems that it was finally coming. So far it has still managed to avoid the worst of the hipster invasion that shrouds most of Brooklyn in a blanket of gentrification. It's only a matter of time for this place sadly.

We sat at a trendy new bar full of well groomed while folks and talked about New York life and its many foibles. After a few more drinks we decamped to a more local watering hole and then finally to Max's rooftop in Harlem.

Well lubricated, we watched as the low sun set the brick tenements ablaze with a luxurious crimson evening light. It was my last sunset in New York and the finest I'd seen so far.

We all sat and quietly marveled at the rich chorus of the city's sounds and colours. I wondered whether I should try my to endure this place for a year or two. After all, It would be a shame not to put yourself through all of this misery. Wouldn't it?

My thoughts then turned to the impending journey to the Deep South. Tomorrow I had a 12 hour drive to South Carolina. This, I felt, would be where I would be able to get to the heart of America and where the adventure could really begin.