What do you do in a day in New York? Woke up around 7.00 am. Excellent - adjusted already to the time difference. Had a superb breakfast including hot waffles with syrup. Went swimming. Then took a bus into New York. $2.85 for the adults - incredible really. We then bought a 1 day metro card so we could get around on all the buses and subways. Took a subway downtown and then walked past the World Trade Centre site. Took the Staten Island ferry - great views particulalry as the sun was coming out. Then as we were feeling a little peckish we headed to Little Italy for some Italianon the bendy bus. Not much Little Italy left these days, most of it seems to have been swallowed by a huge and growing Chinatown. ... read more

Heathrow and back again and again Got up excessively early this morning to go to Heathrow to catch our flight to New York. Arriving at the airport at 06:40 we were politely informed that nobody was allowed into the terminal until 2 hours befor the flight. About 7.15 I asked again and they let us into the terminal. Straight to the Zone A check-in only to see that our flight had been cancelled! Great! We immediately phoned up to re-book and after being bounced around for a bit Catherine got us onto the 16:00 VS9 on the 14th. Catherine then went to have this validated and pick-up our tickets for tomorrow. The whole situations is becoming a farce as it doesn't appear to be the airlines fault. According to Virgin BAA told them they needed ... read more

We are all getting ready for our main holiday in 2006. We are going to try and cover quite a bit of the East Coast of the USA, flying into New York, taking the train to Washington, continuing by train overnight down to Orlando. Then after a couple of days doing the Disney/Universal thing we are going to have 10 days "resting" on the Gulf Coast. Finally down to Miami, CSI here we come! Then a return flight to New York and back to the Uk. Passport, Insurance, Flights, Trains, initial hotels all booked .... after Washington it's play it by ear. Who is going? Steve - 45 - Pre-sales manager for an American Software Company. Catherine - slightly less than 45 - Schoolteacher - all round good egg. Christopher - just turned 15, enough said. ... read more