Graeme Lisa

Sadly our honeymoon is well and truly over, back in rainy UK searching for a job. Talk about back to reality with a bump! However as we sit here with a nice hot cup of coffee we have the best memories anyone could wish for. We've had a fantastic year and would just like to thank everyone who contributed through wedding gifts for making the trip so memorable, this was definalty one honeymoon that wont be forgotten! Below is abit of a summary of our fav bits etc.... Top 3 Favourite countries: Loas Vietnam New Zealand (south island) Top 3 Activities: Diving in Borneo Walking 10km on Great Wall of china (hard work but amazing) Kayaking with dolphins in akaroa (NZ) Cheapest accomodation: 4000 islands Loas- 50p Most expensive accomodation: New York $$$$$$$$$ (but it ... read more

After a brief nights stopover on our way to the nations capital we managed to find a motel about 10 miles outside the centre with a rather handy free shuttle to the local train station for easy access to all the sights Washington Dc has to offer. We settled in and planned our next days activities which basically involved lots and lots of walking. The next morning, up early(ish) and after a 30 min train ride we were right in the heart of the city. And it seems we stepped right into the political heart of the city as soon as we left the station we saw a load of news reporters outside the steps of the mayors building reporting on a rather historic ruling on gun ownership in DC which was all over the TV ... read more

We spent the next two drives just driving, stopping off to find motels in Sioux Falls and then Madison. Then on the Thursday we had the short drive into Chicago to do, this should have been short anyway- 2 hours according to the map! Ofcourse the map didnt take into account how bad the traffic would be, in the end it took us about 4 to get into the city centre. We'd had no real issues finding motels anywhere so far so we decided not to book anywhere here but struggled to find any in the city (apart from expensive looking hotels) so we headed to the visitor info to get some advise and hopefully another coupon book. Only problem with our plan was the lack of parking near the visitor info so we ended ... read more

Santa Fe wasn't on our original itinerary, but Sophie who we'd met in Fiji said they were going and it sounded like a really nice place so we decided to go on a slight detour before heading up north. The journey was again long and very hot (in the 90s) but we were starting to get used to it and we'd been able to download some new podcasts by Chris Moyles and Scott Mills (good old Radio 1) so that kept us going. We arrived late in the afternoon and quickly found a fairly cheap motel just outside of town. Ofcourse now we were in New Mexico we had to do the right thing and eat mexican food.... so we did, but dont know if it really counts as it was a burito from Taco ... read more

So our tactics were to win more money than we started with, and i mean before our world trip! Ok a little adventurous especially as we were pretty much going to hit the 1 cents machines and make our gambling last as long as possible. The drive to Vegas was basically through the desert so was very hot especially as there wasn't a cloud in the sky, that was until we reached the bright lights of Vegas, well what we could see of it through the sand storm that was positioned right over the centre. We could however see the edge of the storm so we ducked in to a factory outlet village for shelter which of course made Lisa V.happy. We did a bit of "window" shopping spending our future winnings before heading to our ... read more