OK, I go away for a couple of days and my blog gets busy. Excellent!
Sephirah, I agree about northern England. Over the last 15 years, I have been excavating Roman ruins on Hadrian's Wall. I rent a flat in a tiny town halfway between Carlisle and Newcastle called Haltwhistle and the people are always welcoming and great to work with(and the beer is excellent too).
Sarah, I loved Australia too but it is inhabited by a creature that I am highly allergic to, my kid brother. The coolest thing I get to do when I visit besides seeing my niece and nephew, is to hold koala bears because one of my in-laws is a ranger in the Blue Mountains. They are the softest, sweetest animals I have ever held.
I want to use this as an opportunity to dispel the myth that New Yorkers are rude. They are extremely friendly but they don't live in Manhattan where all the tourists wind up. Manhattan is inhabited by all the Type "A", masters of the universe from around the world who come to New York to become "New Yorkers".
They are not.
The easiest way to call them out is to simply ask them, "Where did you go to high school?". If it wasn't in the five boroughs then they are absolutely not real New Yorkers! If you are really lucky, you were born in Brooklyn...like me

Yes, we can get a little tribal too but we are really nice people too.