Friday 22nd December Laura - Today we flew from Las Vegas to New York. It wasn't very exciting or eventful. The highlight involved playing a general knowledge quiz. It was raining when we arrived in New York and my first impressions weren't great as we got into the disgusting subway system that makes the London underground look like business class travel! I did get more excited when we got into a yellow cab and I saw lots of "New York" appartment blocks complete with fire escapes. Our B&B is also very nice, so that's another bonus! Paul - We're staying a [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 17th December Paul - It's another full day with Greyhound! This time with added freaks and weirdos, plus as a special BONUS feature, we will actually be stopping somewhere with more than just Burger King to choose from for lunch. Yes, we'll be including MacDonalds as well. Enjoy! Monday 18th December Paul - Arrived in Vegas last night pretty late so we checked into our hotel and went to sleep. Let me just say, the hotel is AWESOME (said in a true American surfer dude accent). We even have a bath AND a King size bed. The best thing is [View Full Entry]

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Happy new years. Hope everyone had a good christmas. Sorry the blog is bit behind, we're working on it! Can't get pictures up at the moment, but we'll add some when we can! Wednesday 13th December Paul - Greyhound fun for a whole day. What could be more exciting than a whole 11 hours and 56 minutes spent with the freaks and weirdos (and the one sane person) on the Greyhound? Nothing I tell you. A woman who talks to her hand? You've got it on the Greyhound! A bus driver who tells you to get off the bus and then [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 7th December Paul - Greyhound gets a bad reputation in America and our first bus was over 40 minutes late which is a cracking way to be introduced to it's delights. You have to bear in mind that EVERYONE drives in America so the people left to take the Greyhound must be desperate... A woman who couldn't stop dancing, a group of people who decided to sit at both the back and front of the bus in 15 minute intervals and the smelly guy made up our troop. Our bus made its' rather obvious stop at Burger King halfway through [View Full Entry]

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Monday 4th December Laura - Today we had a very 'Hollywood' time. It really was VERY exciting and includes some A list celebs, but I'll get to that in a bit... Firstly, we went to Universal Studios for the day and amused ourselves on all the rides and general OTT craziness. We did a really cool studio tour and got to see Desperate Housewives being filmed, among seeing lots of other cool sets including Bates' motel, Jaws sets, War of the World etc. It was really good fun, and as I've never been to anywhere like Disneyland before, Paul suggested going [View Full Entry]

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Friday 1st December I Laura - Happy Birthday Dad! Paul - Final day in Auckland today and we spent the morning browsing round Kelly Tarltons Antartic Adventure where we saw some huge penguins. Apparently it was the first of it's kind in the world at the time but it's looking a bit dated! Definately needs a face lift. Said a (nearly) tearful goodbye to Andy and Anna as they jetted out to warmer climates whilst Laura and I were flying to Hollywood! Flight was fine and we passed the time watching "Little Miss Sunshine" amongst other things. Friday 1st December II [View Full Entry]

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Saturday 25th November Paul - Nice drive to Waitomo this morning where we would hopefully be using a 2 for 1 voucher to go caving in the limestone caves around there. We arrived early so after looking around the village (very dull - they've not excatly made much of the huge tourism industry passing through here) we went to book our tour. Expecting a bargain anyway, we were shocked when the woman at the counter asked us if we wanted a free upgrade AND we could still use our 2 for 1 voucher. That meant we'd be paying $45 for a [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday 22nd November Laura - We left Taupo today and made our way to Rotorua, stopping on the way at a 'Thermal Wonderland'. Sorry to disappoint you Katie, but this place was not a centre for Primark thermals. It's actually a geothermal area with lots of steaming geysers, lava flows, silica terraces, and boiling mud pools. I'm no expert but I believe these are formed due to the volcanic activity in the area and the plates that lie under the ground (I never did understand plate tectonics in Chemistry GCSE). So the place was called Orakei Korako and it smelled of [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 19th November Paul - As predicted the weather was crap so we left Tongariro National Park and we still hadn't seen any of the volcanoes through the mist! After a couple of hours driving along the coast of the biggest lake in New Zealand we arrived at Taupo, a little town settled on the lakes shore. We learnt quickly, due to the lack of rooms, that the World MotorCross championships was going on at the moment so we ended up in a slightly crappy hostel complete with dirty kitchen and wild ducks. Not wanting to spend a minute in the [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 16th November Paul - Thankfully no hangover this morning. But we did get our first sleep in for ages so Laura "I managed to snooze in a tuk-tuk on a pot holed road in Angkor" Darby was especially pleased. Only the thought of a fry up for breakfast got her out of bed. After brunch we wandered down to the seal colony but as it was high tide we couldn't get out to see them close up. It was a lovely day so we went and sat on the lookout over Kaikoura and admired the snow capped mountains in the [View Full Entry]

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