Emma and Gary

Around The World In 11 Months Firstly, it's been a ridiculous delay, but after finally managing to get our New York blogs up we made a start on writing this but never got around to finishing it. Job applications and interviews got in the way (back to earth with a crash). Since we've returned, we've had a hundred and one things to do and unfortunately our blog fell off the list of priorities. Partly because we were now able to speak in person to a lot of people who read it but mainly because it doesn't seem as relevant now that we're back in "reality". It is just as relevant as ever though as it wasn't just written for others to read, but also as a complete account of our journey. We'd always intended to finish ... read more

Statue of Liberty One of the main tourist attractions in New York is The Statue of Liberty, visited by hundreds of tourists on a daily basis. We had been previously advised to get there as early in the day as possible otherwise we should be prepared to stand in long queues. Eager to beat the crowds, we set off from the hostel around 8am. The Statue of Liberty stands tall on Liberty Island as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The statue was given to the Americans as a gesture of friendship from France in 1886 to strengthen the Franco-American relations. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who is well known for designing the Eiffel Tower, engineered the internal structure, while Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper shell. Tourists are no longer allowed ... read more

Late Night Arrival Our flight left San Francisco a wee bit later than we had wanted to and the journey over was mainly spent playing the in flight Trivia game on the screens. Aside from the ridiculously tricky aviation questions, it was a lot of fun and both myself and Emma won different rounds. We eventually landed in JFK airport, New York City and by the time we got our bags, it was half past eleven in the night. We were tired and still had a long way to go to our hostel. Being cheapskate travellers, we took the lengthy route of getting the subway from the airport to the hostel, which took another 2 hours and 3 different trains. The hardest part was carting around our heavy luggage and fitting through the subway barriers. After ... read more

Be Sure To Wear...A Jacket Yep, compared to LA, and in fact most places during summer, San Francisco is a pretty chilly place. It's just as sunny as most other places, but it has an almost permanent fog shrouding everything (basically huge scale condensation) and has some nasty coastal winds. That being said, the weather doesn't exactly make or break a place for us. The overnight Greyhound as mentioned in the last blog wasn't bags of fun; we didn't get much more than the dozing flat rate of forty winks and didn't get to see much scenery during the night obviously. What was a bit more frustrating was that due to getting the different bus, we actually arrived in San Francisco 4 hours earlier than we anticipated. Check-in at the hostel we booked wasn't until 11am, ... read more

Los Angeles: The City Of Angels Arriving in LAX (Los Angeles International Airport), we were sitting on the runway for an additional hour before one of the largest airports in the world found an available gate for the plane. At this point we were beginning to think that it would be a bit of a nightmare getting through passport control and customs, making our estimated arrival at the hostel of 4pm a bit of a dream. Much to our surprise, those stages went exceptionally well and we were standing in the entrance to the airport in no time. Los Angeles is the largest city in the state of California and the second largest in the United States, and everything is so spread out, making travelling by foot a bit of an adventure or near impossible. It ... read more