Geo: 38.8921, -77.0241 Today was a bitterly cold day. Over breakfast in the hotel restaurant, everyone was warning about the upcoming storm, which was later named Storm Jonas. Luckily it seemed that the storm was due on Friday, the day that we were due to fly to Las Vegas. I had been annoyed that our flight had been changed from a mid-morning one to an 8:00am flight, but from what everyone was saying, it was starting to seem that it might be better to be able to escape early in the day. We caught a taxi from the River Inn to the Capitol Building where we had prebooked a tour from home. Unfortunately, the beautiful dome was totally covered in scaffolding. It seems wherever we travel something is being renovated. When we were in Italy recently ... read more

Geo: 40.7528, -73.9853 The two families separated again this morning as the others missed seeing the Air and Space Museum as they were shopping. While they did that, we spent our morning walking the Highline. While very cold, it was also very enjoyable, with interesting views in lots of places. We got off near Greenwich Village and had a stroll around that area and then went into Washington Square Park. We just loved the little parks all around the city. Our next stop was David Bowie's apartment. He had only just passed away a few days before, so we got to see the vast array of flowers and trinkets placed outside. Very sad. We were quite close to the famous Katz Deli so thought of having lunch there – until we saw the ridiculous queue in ... read more

Geo: 40.7528, -73.9853Another very cold sunny day. Unfortunately, our eldest daughter succumbed to her cold and elected to spend the day resting in the hotel, but the rest of us headed out into the sunshine to walk to Top Of The Rock. The queues weren't very long and we were quickly up the at top staring open mouthed at the amazing view. We spent a good hour or two up there, despite the cold wind, taking photos from every angle.After returning to ground level, we caught the subway to the stop closest to the Dakota Building on the edge of Central Park. Sadly, it was being renovated and was totally covered in scaffolding. We spent the next couple of hours walking the Park. We visited Strawberry Fields, Bethesda Terrace and the Belvedere Castle, again snapping photos ... read more

Geo: 40.7528, -73.9853Today was another travel day, so after a taxi to South Station, we got ourselves a Red Cap who helped organise our group of eight with seats in the same area and somewhere to stow all our luggage. It was our first time using Amtrak and at this stage we were very impressed.We had purchased baguettes from Le Bon Pain at the station for our lunch. Having bought food on the Eurostar on a previous holiday, we were very wary of train food. It was very pleasant to sip on a glass of wine, eat a baguette and watch the coastline go past. We arrived on time into Union Station, New York City and immediately hailed cabs to take us to our hotel, The Hotel Elysee, on East 54th Street. We were very excited, ... read more

Geo: 42.3585, -71.0596 We ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We generally prefer to do this as it is quick and easy before a big day of sightseeing. Boston in January is also extremely cold, so it was nice not to have to walk to find breakfast.We then set off into the beautiful but very cold and windy day for our self-guided walk of the Freedom Trail. There were large chunks of ice on the grassy areas as we walked along the street and it was certainly much, much colder than we are used to here in Melbourne. We started our tour just down the road at the Boston Common, where we were all enchanted by the squirrels. We don't have squirrels in Australia, so we find them fascinating. The Common was beautiful, even in the ... read more