So, I've been back for a week now and have had some time to reflect on my trip. There was a few things about USA that bugged me: 1. Tipping - i know the importance of it but still... 2. Tax - just include it in the price like we do here! 3. Alfredo Pasta - Just put the bacon in and make it Carbonara 4. How KFC didnt have fries... all their meals came with potatoe wedges (what the?!, thats the best thing about KFC!) But there was so many things i love about the country that definately outweighed the [View Full Entry]

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OUr last day in the United States of America was spent sleeping in (for the first time in like 8wks a proper sleep-in!!), The lovely guy at the desk downstairs had pushed our checkout back until 2pm so we packed up our stuff for a final time and made our way down to the lobby at about 1:30pm. We left out stuff in the storage room and paid $3 for a ticket to catch the trolly out to Manhattan Plaza for an easy day. Originally we were gonna catch the train into Hollywood and shop it up but as we had [View Full Entry]

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We got up early this morning as we planned checking out and going early to the top of the Rockafeller Centre...failed. The reason it had been raining so much is because there is a hurricane not too far off the coast of New York...booooooo weather! We made our way into Times Square, had some brekkie and walked around for abit before heading into Madame Tussauds. We spent just under 2 hours in here, pretending we were rubbing shoulders with the who's who. We then made our way to the subwey to get a train up to FAO Schwarz. This is the [View Full Entry]

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We slept in a lil then made our way out, walking heaps of the city from 94th street down to West 71st Street to the Dakota Hotel, the hotel where John Lennon was shot. We then decided we'd walked enough in the 33 degree heat and caught the subway the rest of the way down to 59th street. We got off and made our way up to the shopping area, first stopping off at a lil cafe for brekkie, pancakes..mmm. First stop after this: Tiffany & Co on Fifth Ave. I bought 2 items.. couldnt come here and not get something/s. [View Full Entry]

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We slept in a little this morning.. finally got up and headed to say goodbye to Lauren.. sad times. We did our hugs and went on our way to Ground Zero, the site of the September 11 attacks back in 2001, nearly 8 years ago! Now it looks a lot just like a building site, they are building a memorial there, among other things, its only when u make it round to the other side where you really even only slightly to imagine it on the day. When you see the list of names on the wall, and all the other [View Full Entry]

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We got up early this morning as we were meeting down at Battery Park too get the Ferry out to the Statue of Liberty. It only cost $12 and we got some amazing views while heading out there. We didnt have tickets to get up to the top but it didnt matter, we walked around the island for abit, took some really cool photos then made our way back on another ferry to Battery park, we skipped past Ellis Island as we had other stuff to do. We jumped on a train bound for Times Square to the New Amsterdam theatre [View Full Entry]

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We had a little bit of a sleep-in today but didnt wanna waste away our first day of sightseeing the New York City. We got up and made our way to Times Square to meet with Lauren. We made our way to the meeting point for our TV and Movie Sites Tour. The tour started at 11am and on it we saw alot including the Library from Ghostbusters, The Flatiron Building, The house from I am Legend, a few sites from Gossip Girl, The Bowery Ballroom from Coyote Ugly, Bens Pizza from Men in Black II (we had lunch here too), [View Full Entry]

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Bags to coach was at 7:45am on what was our last day of Contiki! We drove for abit then stopped off at the United States Naval Academy. We did an hour long tour around the campus, getting explanations of this and that then jumped back on the bus for abit more of a drive before arriving at our lunch destination, Philadelphia. Christina first took us to a surprise stop which was the steps from Rocky that he runs up. Personally, ive not seen the movie but i did know before the trip that we were doing this so had skipped forward [View Full Entry]

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We got up in time to catch the coach into DC at 9:00. we got dropped outside the Smithsonian Castle again and walked round to the Holocaust Museum. We had to line up to get a ticket to get in, our time was for 10:30. We went in, its was veryyyyy sad but very well set up. We stayed here for just under 2hrs, watching the videos and reading all boards and looking at all the photographs. After this, we headed over to the National Museum of American History. In here we saw The original flag that inspired the American National [View Full Entry]

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We got up early to get the shuttle at 8:00am to get out the the Arlington National Cemetery. It took about half an hour to get out there from our hotel and we got there well in time to see 9:00am session of changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. In there cemetery there are over 126,000 tomb stones with about 5 added each day. We also saw the President J.F Kennedy Gravesite. After this we went and had a quick stop at the Iwo Jima Memorial. It has a great big statue of the raising of [View Full Entry]

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