it's a long way from whitley bay...

Final round up

sarahandphil — Mon, 1 Sep 2008 14:05:00 GMT

It's Whitley Bay!!

Well, we don't know if anyone's still reading this - seeing as we're back in the real world now! But seeing as we promised a final round up, and seeing as Sarah is now unemployed and needs diversions to keep her from Jeremy Kyle-induced madness... (did we say American TV was bad?!) here is a compilation of some of our favourite, and a few not-so-favourite (!)things from around the world that we wrote up on the plane home.

We hope you find them interesting, and maybe even find some inspiration in there! We also really hope you've enjoyed hearing about our travellers tales, traumas and general tittle tattle over the past ten months, and would like to thank everyone once again for reading, and especially for all of the messages we've received which kept us smiling, even when our chips (or, more typically, the Internet connection!) were down.

So, with lots of love, and wishing you many happy adventures of your own, it's bye bye from us (for now!)

Sarah and Phil x x

Phil’s answers	Sarah’s answers

Countries

#1 New Zealand	Joint #1 New Zealand / USA / Thailand / Japan
#2 Japan	Joint #1 New Zealand / USA / Thailand / Japan
#3 China	Joint #2 China, Laos

Cities

#1 St. Petersburg	#1 New York, New York!
#2 Luang Prabang, Laos - the whole city is UNESCO listed and we can see why	#2 Buenos Aires - shopping, tango and eating 'til the early hours - all at bargain prices - heaven!
#3 Buenos Aires / New York	#3 Sydney - it's pretty hard to beat this setting - just avoid the cockatoos!
and the booby prize goes to… Delhi / Moscow	and the booby prize goes to… Wuhan, China - they're throwing concrete around at scary rates here. Get some trees!

Sights

Joint #1 the Iguazu falls / all of New Zealand	Joint #1 Pushkar camel fair / the Iguazu falls
#2 the Grand Canyon	#2 Lake Tekapo, NZ - the most amazing blue I've ever seen, and incredibly silent
#3 the Atacama desert, around San Pedro	#3 monks collecting their alms at sunrise, Luang Prabang



Animals

#1 Cheeky thieving monkeys, Delhi	#1 Giant pandas, Chengdu
#2 Tahi the one-legged Kiwi, Wellington	#2 Koalas, Brisbane
#3 Pandas, Chengdu	#3 Sea Lions, NZ
and the booby prize goes to… pesky mosquitos, especially the one that bit Sarah on the eye

	birds

	#1 Tahi the one-legged Kiwi
	#2 Black cockatoo that liked talking to me, Australia
	#3 Yellow-eyed penguins

Meals

#1 Steak / Chicken / Chorizo brochettes, Santiago	#1 Doyles fish restaurant with Mum and Dad B, Sydney
#2 Steak, with red wine, Buenos Aires	#2 Camarou Muqueque, Salvador
#3 Mushroom curry, Delhi	#3 Churrascaria buffet with dancing, Foz de Iguacu
and the booby prize goes to… a pot of Pea Yoghurt, Beijing	and the booby prize goes to… chips with mash, Buenos Aires

Food discoveries

#1 Laos coffee	#1 chocolate brownies – a lifesaver in China, and a treat pretty much anywhere and everywhere!
#2 Bundabergs drinks, New Zealand	#2 Sticky rice – with anything – sushi in Japan, mangos in Thailand, hot curry in Laos…
#3 Beerlao	#3 Lao coffee
(aren’t these all drinks Phil? – Ed)	and the booby prize goes to… fried pork fat, Chengdu
and the booby prize goes to… live, shell-less turtles in Chinese supermarkets

Journeys

#1 Tubing, Vang Vieng	#1 Any of our long, lazy Southeast Asian boat adventures – down the Yangtze or Mekong rivers, or sailing around Halong Bay on a junk in Vietnam
#2 Elephant trekking, Chiang Mai	#2 Driving Route 66, USA
#3 Yangtze river cruise, China	#3 Tongariro crossing, NZ
and the booby prize goes to… sharing the Moscow – St. Petersburg sleeper train with a Class A psycho Uzbekistani	and the booby prize goes to… our mad dash to, and around, the train station, Mumbai

Sports events

#1 Thai Boxing	#1 Musical chairs at Pushkar
#2 Kabbadi, Pushkar	#2 Baseball, San Francisco
#3 Aussie rules, Melbourne	#3 Aussie rules, Melbourne
and the booby prize goes to… competitive car horn beeping in India	and the booby prize goes to… kayaking in Thailand – hopefully we’ll get our timing more together in time for the first dance at our wedding, otherwise there could well be early marital dischord, if not injuries!

Nights out

#1 Baked potato, baked beans and champagne in our camper van in NZ, after we got engaged	#1 San Pedro de Atacama – around the fire looking at the stars…
#2 Sydney Opera House	#2 Sydney Opera House
#3 Las Vegas	#3 Las Vegas / Shanghai acrobats
and the booby prize goes to… driving round LAX for two hours looking for a motel	and the booby prize goes to… the boneshaker Chinese night bus on which I got 1 hour sleep, during which my camera and i-pod were stolen L

Essential things to pack

#1 mosquito repellent	#1 books
#2 good books	#2 silk sleeping bag liner
#3 pants	#3 scrabble

Things we missed (other than friends and family, who of course were always number 1!)

#1 Sunday roasts	#1 Having a proper Sunday
#2 Breakfast on Stoke Newington Church St	#2 Cooking (NB: I might retract this at a later stage)
#3 Sky Sports	#3 My i-pod (see above!)
and the booby prize goes to… work!	and the booby prize goes to… cigarettes (very proud to be a non-smoker since Jan 1^st though!)

Books read

#1 Wild Swans, Jung Chang	#1 Zorro, Isabelle Allende
#2 The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bilgakov	#2 The Corrections, Jonathon Franzen
#3 The Damage Done, Warren Fellows	#3 The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson
and the booby prize goes to… How the Mind Works = How the Mind Hurts!	and the booby prize goes to… Touching the Void, Joe Simpson (just a bit on the scary side when about to go up a mountain!)

Cities to live in

#1 Auckland	#1 Auckland
#2 San Francisco	#2 Vancouver
#3 New York	#3 San Francisco
and the booby prize goes to… Mumbai - we'd last 5 minutes!

Hotels

#1 Ryokan Kangetsu, Tokyo	#1 NZ camper van
#2 Barra Guesthouse, Salvador	#2 Ryokan Kangetsu, Tokyo
#3 Hostel Tanguera, San Telmo, Buenos Aires	#3 Hostel Tanguera, San Telmo, Buenos Aires

Bargains

#1 £3 /night hotel, Khao San Road, Bangkok	#1 Parks – always a nice, free way to chill out in a city. And often come with ice creams, animals or some kind, audience participation opportunities…
#2 Argentina	#2 Buenos Aires (steak, wine, shoes the zoo, and underwear particularly!)
#3 20p Pad Thai, Bangkok	#3 Chanel eyeliner – one pencil got me all the way around the world without fading into the background in all our photos– thanks Orange folks!)
#4 1st class cabin, Yangtze cruise - well worth it to escape the kara-jokey	#4 free refills in the USA

Experiences

#1 Getting engaged!	#1 Tubing, Vang Vieng, Laos
#2 Walking (some of!) the Great Wall	#2 Elephant trek, Thailand
#3 Driving across the USA	#3 Sandboarding, Chile
	#4 Getting into the whole spa and massage thing – in Budapest, Japan and SE Asia...
and the booby prize goes to… being Mad Freddy’s assistants in Santiago. Still makes us blush!
Museums

#1 Hermitage, St. Petersburg	#1 Hermitage, St. Petersburg
#2 Te Pa Pa, Wellington	#2 MOMA, New York
#3 Hanoi ‘Hilton’	#3 Monterey Bay Aquarium, California
	#4 Pre-Columbian Art, Santiago
	#5 Lincoln Experience, Illinois

We have loads more recommendations too, and copious notes that it would be lovely to think were worth taking -so if anyone is interested, ever, just ask!

Big Sur, Boston & back home!

sarahandphil — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:16:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

That's it! After 9 months, 16 countries, 17 flights, 12 train journeys, umpteen bumpy bus rides and nearly 12,000 miles by car and van, we've made it round the world and back. And after all that, the weather in Britain is still rubbish.

We tried to bring some sunshine home with us but apparently it contravened some customs rule about importing strange and unusual foreign goods.

We arrived back in London on Monday evening having finished our US road trip in Los Angeles and spending 3 final days of sunshine in Boston.

Though the weather wasn't sunny all the way, as the fog that enveloped San Francisco Bay decided to accompany us all the way down Big Sur and only lifted when we started to head inland about 100 miles from LA.

Big Fog

Big Sur is a 90 mile stretch of rugged and (apparently) incredibly scenic road that hugs the coastline between Monterey and San Luis Obispo in central California. Unfortunately northern and central California has a weird climate that makes the coast about 10 degrees (celsius) colder than just a couple of miles inland and often leaves the coast shrouded in thick fog.

We delayed our journey down the coast by a day, hoping that the fog might lift and, though it didn't, it gave us time to spend Tuesday afternoon at the Monterey Aquarium which was really good.

Apparently it's one of the best aquariums in the world and it's not hard to see why. There's a seal colony on the beach right next to it and inside they've got sharks, hammerheads, crazy coloured jellyfish and, slightly strangely, otters. They've also got pools where you can touch bat rays (they look like stingrays but had had their stings removed for obvious reasons) and other sea creatures. There's even an outdoor pool where kids under 13 can go scuba diving with instructors.

Elephant seals. You wouldn't want to meet these lot in a beach volleyball match!

We didn't quite look young enough for the scuba diving though this travelling lark must have helped roll back the years a bit as we've been asked for ID nearly each time we've tried to buy a beer. That's not entirely surprising for Sarah as shops and restaurants are meant to ask for ID if you look under 30 but Phil will be 34 in a few months and isn't sure whether he should be pleased or insulted at these requests. Especially confusing was the reaction of a shopkeeper outside Monterey who, when presented with Phil's passport, said "Oh 1974, that's really old, I thought you looked young!" Er, thanks Mr Shopkeeper.

Wednesday was Big Sur day and though the fog did get in the way a bit, we could still get a feel for how beautiful that bit of coast line is. Maybe we'll just have to come back and do it again one day when it's sunnier! We can't really complain though as we reckon we've been very lucky with the weather on the whole trip. We've barely had a bad day and nothing that's really hampered our plans.

One bit of Big Sur that we did spot through the fog...

...and some bits that we didn't!

We then drove through Malibu and Santa Monica on our way into Los Angeles and saw a beautiful sunset across the Pacific and then looked for somewhere to stay. We were still looking 2 hours later...

Sarah in Santa Monica and Malibu sunset

At first we thought we'd try Santa Monica for a hotel but we missed the turn off and had to do a 30 minute detour back onto the freeway. When we made it back, pretty much everywhere was full but we found a motel on the edge of town which had one room left. "Hurray" we thought. But it cost £120 for the night. "Boo" we thought. So we gave up on Santa Monica and decided to head down the road towards the airport where we were sure we'd find cheap accommodation...

And we thought Heathrow was bad. The area around LAX airport is horrific. It's like a composite of all the bad bits of America in one place. Chaotic roads with drivers tearing around and cutting you up, endless drags lined with neon motels and fast food joints and whatever the American equivalent of hoodies is hanging around each corner. Arriving there at 11pm, it felt like something out of Bladerunner.

After having no luck at any of the chain motels, we eventually found a room at a run down independent further down the romantically named Airport Boulevard. We carried our bags up to our room (past a guy who had his door wide-open, blasting the TV out, while he sand-papered his skateboard with no shirt on) and collapsed into our room and hit the sack.

Luckily we made it through the night without incident and returned our car the next morning so we could catch our flight. We thought we'd need to get a shuttle bus to the airport but a kindly old guy from the rental company offered to drive us to the airport in our car! Legend. We had a great chat with him about Vegas and he told us about all the stars he'd seen there, including Frank Sinatra and Elvis. After that and the free upgrade from the Ford Focus to the Rav4, we're happy to recommend Hertz car rentals to anyone thinking of driving in the US. Assuming it wasn't all a mistake and we get stung with loads of extra charges when we get home that is...

And so to Boston, our final stop. We stayed in a fabulous B&B in the Dorchester area of the city. It was built at the turn of the century by a Bostonian big wig who was apparently a political rival of John F Kennedy's dad. It was a lovely big wooden building with verandas and a huge old fashioned drawing room where we spent the evenings playing pool on the full size table and watching the olympics on the giant TV.

Carruth House - our B&B

Wandering round Boston was a great way to unwind from the road trip. It's a very nice looking city and probably the closest in style to an English city that we've come across. That's probably due to it being one of the earliest places to be settled by the original immigrants from England (it's named after Boston in Lincolnshire where they came from) so wasn't designed on a grid system or with big roads for cars.

We followed the 'Freedom Trail' through the city on Friday and Saturday, which takes you past all the major historical points, mainly to do with how they won independence from Britain. We also spent some time in the parks and had a big meal on Saturday night to mark the end of the trip.

The Old State House - scene of the 'Boston Massacre'

Sunday was mainly spent recovering from said meal, watching the Newcastle-Man Utd game and relaxing in the park before catching our flight home early on Monday morning.

And now we're home! We bet you're all nearly as exhausted as us having read through all these blogs but thanks for sticking with us. We've really enjoyed writing them and it's been a great way to stay in touch with our friends and family even when we've been far from home. We're really looking forward to seeing you all again in person soon!

That's not quite it for the blog though. You don't get away that easy. At some point in the next week or so, we're going to do one more blog entry with our highlights (and a couple of lowlights!) from the whole trip. So if you're after any far flung holiday ideas for 2009, stay tuned...

Love Sarah and Phil x

Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Vancouver, Seattle & San Francisco

sarahandphil — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:07:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

Sorry it's been a while - we've been making the most of our last couple of weeks of freedom (arrrgh - mild panic!!) and packing it all in as usual, so there's lots to tell you about again.

After leaving you in Utah last week, we decided to make the most of the National Parks pass that we'd invested in, and spent the next two days touring around the big wilderness areas of the north west - Grand Teton and Yellowstone in Wyoming.

The Teton mountains are part of the Rockies, and were named after members of a French expedition were reminded of erm big bosoms! Blooming French, bringing the tone of our blog down, tch. Makes you wonder how they'd feel if a U.S. party turned up and re-christened the Pyrenees 'lil' dunkin' donuts'...

Sarah by Lake Jenny - and Phil, trying his best to snap his ankle so we might stop a while longer...

The park really was stunningly beautiful and we had a lovely day ambling about, and hopping in and out of the car to have a look at things. For those of you that haven't had the chance to visit U.S. National Parks, they are quite different to ours, and you have to get used to doing things a bit differently. The obvious thing is the scale - so it is great that they have well-thought out scenic roads to give those with little time, like us, a taster of the best bits. And of course there is no Kendal mint cake!

The northern parks are also extremely rich with wildlife, partly to the credit of early management of human use of the parks (though they didn't always go about that in totally the right way, it has at least kept these parts of the 'wild west' properly wild). So even from the car we were able to see bison, elk, antelope, beavers, raccoons and bighorn sheep.

Bison right outside our car window

We did also manage a walk up to 'Inspiration Point', overlooking Lake Jenny - in our flip flops (raising a few eyebrows amongst the better prepared hikers!). It was a lovely walk, passing rivers, waterfalls, and of course the big Tetons themselves.

The following day we drove up to Yellowstone, which is really enormous (the circular route around it is about 100 miles in circumference!) - so it was really a whistle-stop tour, but fantastic to get a glimpse of the main features the park has to offer. And they are features and a half!

Firstly, we had time for a picnic while waiting for the famous Old Faithful geyser to erupt - a full 7 minutes late, so not so faithful to the timetable after all. He must be getting cantankerous in his old age!

The old geezer comes to life (check out the crowd!)

Then on to the spectacular canyon of the Yellowstone river, via more geothermal features, lakes, snakey rivers, stalagmite-filled valleys... There are so many amazing things to see, but time is tight - both yours and ours! - so a small sample of pictures might be a more efficient way of sharing them with you...

Yellowstone sights

We also saw a forest fire which had started to the east of the lake, and looked pretty dramatic as clouds of smoke rose into the sky. They seemed to get it under control pretty quickly though - it seemed pretty much par for the course at this time of year. Apparently though one of the firefighters was attacked by a bear who had been woken from his slumber by the fire and wasn't too happy about it. Scarey!

Fire in the park

One final Yellowstone 'highlight' we must mention though, is that we spotted an Alaska number plate in the car park! Now this might not be the holiday anecdote that has you logging on to lastminute.com in droves, but it was pretty exciting for us because, like the big geeks that we are, we've been playing that long car journey classic 'spot the car plates from all the U.S. states' - and had had Alaska on the 'doubtful' list from the outset. So it was with some excitement that we ticked it off. Hopefully the driver of the car wasn't too perturbed by our pointing and high-fiving as we drove by...

We still have South Carolina to get for the full set - but are hopeful for a spot when we fly back east to Boston for the weekend. Watch this space!

On leaving the park, we had a beautiful drive through Montana, for a long time following the Yellowstone river through 'big sky' country, which looked especially golden and delicious in the fading sunlight. Which proved a distraction too far for Sarah, who got pulled over for a wee little bit of speeding. She got away with a pep talk and a warning from the police officer who must have had a soft spot for English blondes. Phew!

Big sky country in Montana - surely there'll not be any traffic cops round here...

Next day we had a long drive across to Seattle (about 560 miles) - which we took at a slightly more steady pace (at least until we got into the state of Washington, where the warning doesn't count-tee hee!). We got there by 4pm, in time for a coffee (of course) a look around the enormous Pike Place market and Belltown (birthplace of grunge).

From our brief glimpse, Seattle seemed a nice, offbeat sort of a place, where you'd definitely still feel at home in a lumberjack shirt and bleached out mop (as long as you didn't work at that other Seattle institution, Microsoft - we spotted some mini-Gates's on a corporate bus, looking like fully paid up members of the chinos and blazers club!)

Pike Place Market in Seattle and Sarah enjoying a celebratory wine after we finally made it to the west coast!

On Wednesday, we drove up to Vancouver for a day trip. Again we only really had a taster, but it seemed a very attractive, progressive sort of a place with lovely parks, funky modern architecture, and our favourite bit, Granville Island, home to loads of art galleries, shops, bars etc. and colourful floating houses. You can definitely see why Vancouver is so often voted one of the best places in the world to live. Here's proof that you really can't have everything though - there were hardly any tacky fridge magnets to be seen! Poor Vancouver.

Vancouver: nice parks and funky floating houses (in the foreground, the skyscrapers aren't floating...)

We stayed in Olympia, WA that night, so that we were positioned ready to start our drive down the west coast. Olympia was actually a pretty cool place, very studenty and 'alternative', with a proper small town feel, and a real small town centre - unlike so many towns we've passed through which are just one long strip of identikit fast food chains, and drive-thru everything, which make it difficult to tell where the town is (and even more difficult to see any real people).

Whinge over, Olympia was nice, and so was Portland, our lunch stop, and another trendy sort of place with old buildings, vintage clothes shops, live music venues, and other things encouraging 'walk-through' and 'maybe even stop for a while' behaviour.

Seagull - stopping for a while

The next couple of days were spent winding our way down Route 101, the coast road, through Washington, Oregon, and into California. We had a symbolic dipping of the toes in the Pacific in a nice little town called Cannon Beach in Oregon - it being a little on the chilly side for full body dipping (it is about 20 degrees cooler on the coast than inland, rather to our surprise!)

Sea, feet, chilly, brrr.

As we entered northern California we noticed the trees getting bigger and realised we were in Redwood (and Big Foot!) country and we took a side trip down the 50 mile 'Avenue of Giants' through Humboldt Redwoods State Park on Saturday morning to have a closer look. The trees really are massive! Many of them grow to over 90 metres and the tallest is 115. We didn't manage to see that one but we did see the 'Dyerville Giant' which measures 113 metres and is 1600 years old. Though unfortunately its current 'height' is more like 3 metres because it fell in 1991 when a nearby tree collapsed into it. Apparently the Park Ranger was asleep in a nearby cabin at the time and thought he'd heard a train crash!

After coming to terms with the awesome height of the Redwoods, we decided it was time for a closer look, so what better way than to drive through one?! Well they have drive-thru everything elses here (fast food, ATMs - it can only be a matter of time before they invent a drive-thru loo) so why not trees? Here's us driving through the famous Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree in Leggett.

What the phrase "only in America" was designed for

We arrived in San Francisco on Saturday afternoon and were there until Monday evening. When we arrived the Golden Gate bridge was shrouded in fog - as it famously often is, but the city itself looked gorgeous in the sun and we had a brilliant couple of days there.

We hung on by our hats (and arms) riding the famous 'cable cars' (which are really more like trams) up and down hills, so we could explore the different areas around touristy Fisherman's Wharf (back in the fridge magnet game!), North Beach (including Little Italy), Haight Ashbury (where the original flower power kids used to hang out), Pacific Heights (gorgeous houses) and the shops around Union Square.

Hold tight now those hills look steep!

The best shop we've seen on the whole trip (Phil was so excited his hair stood on end)

We also went to a ball game on Sunday! Phil had spotted that the San Francisco Giants were playing the L.A. Dodgers and managed to get tickets online on Saturday night. It was a great game to catch, with packed stands (there is quite a big rivalry between the two California teams) and a great atmosphere as everyone tucked into their hot dogs and frozen lemondade to watch what turned out to be a very tight match, the Home team coming back from 4-3 down to win the match 5-4 in the final inning. We seem to have a knack of seeing this kind of result in far flung places - shame it never seems to work whenever we go to see NUFC...

Rounders...er...sorry Americans, we mean baseball, in San Francisco

So now we're about to make our way down Big Sur to L.A. and then we fly to Boston on Thursday for the final destination of the trip before we fly home on Monday.

It's been fantastic to read everyone's comments and really meant a lot to us and we're glad we seem to have kept you entertained - we were worried we might only have a couple of readers left by this stage, so thanks for sticking with us! We can't wait to see everyone when we get back and it'll make up for the trip being all over!

In the meantime, stay posted for the final blog!

Love Sarah and Phil x

P.S. And don't forget that all our USA and Canada photos are over at http://journals.worldnomads.com/sarahandphilusa

Route 66 (part 2), Grand Canyon, Vegas & Utah

sarahandphil — Sat, 2 Aug 2008 13:20:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

We're still on the road and zooming our way through the US with the distance to Los Angeles shrinking faster than Gordon Brown's approval ratings.

We're now in Idaho and not far off the top of our big western loop. In fact we've managed to stick very closely to our original plan and have got through 5,000 miles in two weeks. Fact fans may be interested to know that that's the same distance as London to Beijing. Maybe road trips could become a new Olympic sport?

So, we left you in Elk City, Oklahoma and another 100 miles took us into the Texas 'panhandle' (the sticky-outy bit at the top) where, true to stereotype, we saw lots of cattle and roadkill armadillo. Less expectedly, we also came across 10 cadillacs half-buried into the ground just outside Amarillo...

Pink cadillacs, oozing, erm into, the street

We didn't find Peter Kay or Tony Christie in Amarillo (presumably they still haven't found anyone who knows the way yet) but we did find this inspired bit of advertising at a Burger King right next to a McDonalds...

The local burger joints not on such good terms in Texas then...

We stopped for lunch at 'the Midpoint Cafe' in the tiny town of Adrian, - another fantastically retro place, which marks the halfway point on Route 66 between Chicago and LA (the clue is in the name!).

It's a cafe, at the mid point!

The roast beef, spuds and veg was the first "proper" Sunday lunch we've had on the trip. Thai stir fry and Vietnamese spring rolls just don't quite cut it. We nearly managed it in Argentina but as they haven't discovered vegetables yet, Sunday beef and red wine didn't count...

After lunch we crossed the border into New Mexico and right on cue, the landscape turned a lot more barren and red and generally more desert than farm-like, and the roadkill armadillo stopped, thank goodness. The place names and radio stations all became Spanish too, so the country and western music that had accompanied us for the past few states changed to, er, Coldplay, whose CD we picked up in Toronto. Have you tried listening to Mexican music?!

New Mexico was beautiful though and we stopped off at Santa Fe and Alberquerque. Santa Fe is all adobe buildings and it has the oldest church in the US.

View of the Plaza Santa Fe

Alberquerque is a bigger modern city but the old town is really well preserved with a nice square in the centre. They also have hot dogs, but, sadly, no jumping frogs...

Between the two cities, we also found a little place called Tinkertown. It's a quirky little home-made museum, stuck in the middle of nowhere, and full of what seems like millions of miniature towns and people that were crafted out of scrap and things found by a husband and wife over 40 years. If not to everyone's taste, it was pretty amazing, and quite inspiring to see what they'd created just in their spare time. A plaque near the entrance sums it up brilliantly: "We did all this while you were watching TV!"

One of the exhibits in Tinkertown - a tiny circus (and why not?!)

After New Mexico we crossed into Arizona and stayed in Flagstaff before heading to the Grand Canyon the next day. There's not much we can say that the pictures can't do better but the Canyon was of course fantastic. The scale of it is just incredible and the different coloured layers of rock, some of which are billions of years old, make it a truly awesome sight.

The Grandest of Canyons

After leaving the Grand Canyon, we hit Route 66 again for the last time. We left it in Nevada, just 250 miles short of LA so we could head north to the bright lights of Las Vegas.

Bye bye Route 66, hello Las Vegas!!

We knew Vegas was pretty much in the middle of the desert but we were a bit concerned as we watched the temperature gauge steadily creep up as we approached, despite it being late evening. By the time we pulled onto the (in)famous Strip (where all the casinos are) and parked up at our hotel, it was gone 11pm and the temperature was 100 farenheit - about 36 Celsius. We couldn't believe it, so in case you don't either, here's the proof!

We only had two nights in Vegas and had to make the most of them so we checked in and promptly went a-gambling and a-drinking till gone 3am. Perhaps the a-drinking wasn't such a-good-idea though, as having steadily turned his 20 dollars into 100 on the roulette wheel, Phil started to think he was George Clooney and went all in on black and lost the lot on the last spin of the wheel!

Oh well, if you can't lose your shirt in Vegas where can you? Luckily we won it all back the following evening and this time tucked the winnings safely away before temptation (or booze) could get the better of us.

Leaving Las Vegas - with some money!

We were staying in the Flamingo hotel right in the middle of the Strip, opposite Caesar's Palace (where Elton John was playing that evening) and just along from the Bellagio (which was the casino in Ocean's Eleven) and the Venetian (which has to be seen to be believed).

The Flamingo, and comparing sunglasses with Elton

The Venetian was until fairly recently the largest hotel in the world and features a replica of Venice's Rialto bridge (to scale!) and has a canal running through it with gondoliers offering rides on genuine Venetian gondolas. Unbelievable. Vegas may well be the most over-the-top, ridiculous place in the world but it's hard not to be impressed.

Real gondolas in not-so-real 'Venice'

Our hotel was a little more normal (at least by Vegas standards) though it still had live flamingos in an area near the pool. A pool which came in very handy on Wednesday afternoon when the temperature peaked at 42 degrees!

On Thursday we left Vegas and headed to Utah, with a detour to the Hoover Dam. The dam is on the Colorado River and provides all the power for Las Vegas with enough left over to power another million homes. That's quite an achievement considering Vegas must have more neon lights than there are grains of sand in the desert. And almost as many air conditioned hotel rooms.

The Hoover Dam - with all those neon lights to power, how does it ever get the vacuuming done?!

Utah was really fantastic. We visited three national parks: Zion, Arches and Canyonland. They were all great with incredible scenery and massive rock formations. Zion was very beautiful, with pink, red and white formations, and the arches in, well, Arches were really picturesque.

Zion National Park

Arches national Park

But Canyonlands was the most awe-inspiring. It's absolutely vast and the red rock canyons are like nothing we've ever seen. Apparently it has some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet and we can believe it. It looks like Mars and if you had some better walking shoes, and better heat tolerance than we did, you could happily spend weeks just exploring.

In Canyonlands National Park (not the Grand Canyon - just a normal one apparently!)

Today we've driven north through Utah and into Idaho, via Salt Lake City. We had a quick paddle in the lake, but it's not somewhere you'd probably want to spend too much time in. The lake is surrounded by sulphurous smelling flats and the rim is covered in millions of tiny tickly flies. It was nice to look at, but a little bit eerie. A bit like the city itself.

The salt lake

We parked in the centre of Salt Lake but there were no shops, just lots of offices, conference centres and churches belonging to the Mormons. There seemed to be about 20 different newlyweds having their wedding photos taken but no one else was around. We walked into a big food court which had just two other people in it, so we left. Maybe we should have come on a week day or we were in the wrong part of town but it felt a little like wandering into the twilight zone.

The state building, Salt Lake City and could this be the only shopping mall in America that is empty on Saturday??

So we scarpered to Idaho. Which is famous for....drum roll....potatoes. Exciting eh? Idaho's nickname is The Spud State. They're very proud of their tattie heritage, so much so that they even have a spud museum. Really...

We're spending tonight in Idaho Falls and plan to spend the next two days in Grand Teton and Yellowstone parks. After that we're heading to Seattle and hopefully we'll fit in a day trip to Vancouver. Then it's a drive all the way down the west coast to LA via San Francisco.

Just before we go, a quick word on American television: Aaagghh! Just had to get that off our chests!

Take care everyone,

Love Sarah and Phil x x

Toronto, Chicago and Route 66 (part 1)

sarahandphil — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:03:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

We've clocked up 3000 miles now on our road trip across the states, and have just seen a sign for Miami out of the window... hang on a minute, didn't we tell everyone we were following the pioneers and heading out west?

Actually we are still on track and it's Miami, Oklahoma we've just passed... phew! They have a habit of doing that around here. We've almost lost track of the number of Springfields we've driven through (and not a single one inhabited by yellow cartoon characters either;). But yes, we have made it pretty much to the half way point already after a busy few days on the road...

We spent our last night in Canada having a delicious meal at the top of the CN Tower in Toronto, which has amazing views as you'd expect, but to our surprise, was made particularly memorable by a huge thunderstorm, which we got to see close up at 400 metres above ground, and from every angle as the restaurant revolved through 360 degrees. Not recommended for the faint-hearted!

The view up - and down - from the scary CN Tower

We really liked Toronto though - it has funky shopping areas a-plenty, loads going on in terms of music, art, film etc. Plus the great lakes are right on the door step (or stoop as they'd have it round here). The people that live here all looked sort of wholesome, but fashionable and are obviously pretty clever to live somewhere so nice but cheap too. Irritating really.

The new extension to the Royal Ontario Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind (who also has the commission for the new World Tade Centre site in NY)

The Toronto-ites have also managed to pick up on some of the best things about US restaurants (friendly waitresses, free coffee refills, fresh ingredients) whilst having the good sense to leave the '6 free donuts with every side salad' - mentality to their southern neighbours. No drive-thru gyms for these guys!

We made some progress back towards donut-land that night (sorry - we'll stop all this rudeness soon!) - and stayed in a town called Hammond, just south of Lake Michigan, then made an early start next morning as we were headed all the way to not so windy, but hot and sunny city, Chicago.

This actually was a slight change of plan from the original, which had us headed in a big northern loop round the lakes and via the Upper Michigan peninsular. We were put off doing this by the Michigan slogan though - "if it is a beautiful peninsular you seek, look around you"... For goodness sake. We were also slightly put off by the fact that it would have meant a 500 mile detour with no time to stop to appreciate the beauty of said peninsular. Which we are sure you will agree, would have been a great shame!

The more direct route to Chicago took us fairly quickly through
Michigan, skirting around Detroit (apparently they build a lot of
cars there so they can get out quick...), and on into Indiana. The scenery is really quite pleasant here, with giant fields of corn
looking for all the world like the home of the jolly green giant and purty white clapboard houses all along the road - mostly draped in stars and stripes and with an old boy catching some shade out on the verandah. All very picturesque.

There are also some of the largest Amish communities anywhere in this
part of Indiana, and sure enough we saw lots of people in horse drawn
carts, dressed in traditional clothing and just going about their
business, trying not to get run over by the giant trucks (or Rav 4s!)
steaming through on their way out west.

Amish folk - Shipshewana, Indiana (photos taken with paparazzi-like subtlety out of the car window...)

We stopped off in a couple of the villages to have a look around - and had a delicious cherry (Sarah) and banana cream (phil) pie in a lovely Amish-run place in Middlebury. Just in the interests of cultural enlightenment you understand...

We stayed just outside of Chicago that night, in a cheap motel next to a Best Western - so we could go to their restaurant and borrow their wifi for free tee hee!

We then had a full day in Chicago on Thursday. Its a really nice city with some amazing architecture - new and old - and, coming as a surprise to us, several beaches.

Some things we saw in Chicago

Chicago is located on the edge of Lake Michigan, and the residents know how to make the most of it - they have created beaches which spread out to the east of the city - and they were chock full of sunbathers, people playing volleyball or just hanging out at beach side bars.

One of Chicago's lovely beaches - a bit of a different atmos these days to the gritty world of Al Capone!

We walked the whole stretch, stopping for ice cream despite it apparently being 'Christmas in July' (?) and to jump out of the way of people learning to ride 'segways' - which are rather awkward looking two-wheeler motorised buggy type things that seem to be flavour of the month round here.

Get a calendar (and a bike) we say

Leaving Chicago on Friday meant making like Jack Kerouac and joining route 66 - which will take us all of the way through the Great Plains, the mid-west, and eventually to sin city itself. No, not Watford, Las Vegas...

Our first day on the 'mother road' went pretty much to plan. We drove about 1/3 of it, mostly on freeways that have been laid over the original brick road, though there are also still some original sections to follow, varying from Devon-ish single-lane dirt tracks to dusty two lane highways. And they didnt even have su doku to kill time!

No wonder so many great inventions have come out of this country. If it weren't for all those long car journeys maybe they'd never have got around to dreaming up drive through ATM machines, buckaroo, or space hoppers... we were grateful for the invention of air con anyway - it's been hitting 100 degrees most days - and that we could make steady progress on the surprisingly empty freeway sections.

This made time for diversions on to the old sections of road and for stops to see various original landmarks - there are some great old gas stations, neon signs and billboards and after a few stops at some real old skool diners, we were beginning to feel just like extras in 'Happy Days'. Its just a shame that Phil left his 'the Fonz' jacket behind in Japan, there surely would have been waitresses on roller skates flocking in no time!

English visitors still seem to be rare enough to raise a few
eyebrows in these parts, and we were a bit of a conversation point
on a few occasions (you're driving how far??).

For example, in Litchfield , IL, we got chatting to a farmer who was on a trip with his sons to buy a new boat trailer. He didn't actually seem to believe that we had really come all of the way from London and asked us a few questions, perhaps by way of a test...

"so you don't have too many farms in England then?"

(no, not many in London but there are some left elsewhere..)
"no corn 'n' no beans huh. That's something ain't it"

(well we mostly go to the supermarket but we might try and develop our 3
square feet of land into a herb / aromatherapy garden when we get
home...)
"uhuh. How much does a five bedroom house cost in London these days then?"

(wild guess - a million dollars - we don't know either)

"you folks must be totally outta your minds!! Well you enjoy your
trip now and come by our farm of you wanna place to stay a few days..."

Maybe he had a point...

One other interesting stop was in Springfield, Illinois, which was where
Abraham Lincoln spent his early years. As well as his childhood
home, lawyers office, favourite laundrette blah blah blah, you can
also visit an excellent new museum all about his life, the abolition
of slavery, and the civil war.

It was put together extremely well, with some really interesting
original articles (like the actual Gettysburg address), plus more
high tech stuff like a white house reconstruction and a modern-day
style newscast of what his election campaign might have looked like
if it were today. Well worthwhile stopping by for a couple of hours.
Even if our budget is now in serious jeopardy as a result of the
gift shop's collection of fridge magnets and Abe-style beards
tempted us into a few purchases...

Hmmm

In the afternoon we made another stop at a place called Cahakia, on the outskirts of St. Louis. Here they have discovered the site of the largest ancient civilisation north of Mexico - at one time home to 20,000 people! It had suburbs and everything. All that's left today though are
some earthen mounds and a museum, so you have to use your imagination a
bit but again, it was really well done, and it was good to reflect a while on how much change this part of the world has seen.

The site of the ancient city of Cahakia now, and how it might have once looked

You also get a good view of St. Louis's giant gateway from the top
of the main mound...

This might be the best way to see St. Louis, which by all accounts is one badass place closer up, pretty impoverished and with big crime problems. It is also apparently so polluted that its river caught fire! And we thought London was bad... We made a speedy exit anyway, and got back on the road for Springfield (this one in Missouri - keep up!) for the night.

We stayed in a brilliant motel (the Rail Inn) which had been fully
restored to its 50s glory, and was also just up the road from an
original Steak 'n' Shake diner, where Sarah had a steak and a shake
(of course) and Phil had a salad... hopefully we'll not be arrested
for this most strange and out of town-like behaviour!

The Rail Inn

Shake

Day 2 on route 66 took us another 450 miles, out of Missouri, briefly
through Kansas (just missed the Wizard of Oz tornados thankfully) and across most of Oklahoma. We put in more driving hours on slightly older roads (about 9 1/2 hrs total) and stopped a little less.

The view out of the window shifted gradually as we headed further south west, and there are fewer fields of corn, more fields with cows, and there seems to be a greater variety of housing - some richer, some much poorer.

You also of course notice more country music on the radio, and more
'God is your true friend, so repent or else he gonna getcha' - type messages start to provide variation from the endless gas prices debates...

Possibly our favourite sign so far: 'What would Jesus eat?' (a tasty mixed grill at 'The Crossing' apparently...)

We did have time to stop for a sneaky peaky at Carthage, a nice old-fashioned Missouri town with a fancy courthouse, and, slightly incongruously, a British vintage car rally going on.

We also stopped in Tulsa, where it really was very, very hot - to the
point where there was no - one really around, and many of the shop's
had shut, despite it being Saturday afternoon. We actually saw tumbleweed drifting about! The quietness meant we could stick our feet in the nice street fountains in peace, and cool off before leaving for Elk City, Oklahoma, where we spent saturday night.

No elk sightings to report, but plenty of cheap cow on offer at the local eatery. Phil has also now given up on the healthy eating 'plan' and we both tucked into beef tacos before hitting the sack in preparation for making our way to the wild wild west...

However, this entry has now gone on for almost as long as route 66 itself, so we'll let you get on with something more useful now and tell y'all about that in our next entry...

Thanks for sticking with us everybody - only a few more of these to go now!

Lots of love,

Sarah and Phil x x

Montreal, Ottawa & Niagara Falls

sarahandphil — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:07:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

Since picking up our car on Friday we've managed to cover about 1,000 miles and spent 18 hours on the road buzzing around Canada's big cities and Niagara.

We picked up the car on Friday night and had planned to head north through New York state and find a motel on the US side of the border before heading across to Montreal the next morning. Unfortunately things didn't go quite to plan.

Just as we pulled off the motorway (sorry freeway) at about 11:30pm to find a motel in Plattsburgh, the last US town before the border, a torrential downpour came out of nowhere. No problem we thought, we'll just drive slowly and find a motel and get some sleep. Not so simple as it turned out. It was a Friday night and half of Canada had decided now would be a good time to visit their neighbours and all 4 of the motels we tried were full and it seemed we weren't likley to find anywhere before Canada.

We pressed on and crossed the border at 10 past midnight on Saturday morning. We drove another 10 miles and eventually found a couple of motels. The first was full but the second had one room left and it took us all of about a millisecond to agree to take it and get some rest.

Luckily the sun came back out on Saturday morning and we had a short drive into Montreal and parked up and found a great cafe for breakfast, serving up huge salmon and cream cheese bagels with free refills of coffee. Suitably refreshed, we strolled through downtown Montreal and towards the old town on the banks of the river.

Breakfast in Montreal

At this point, we should mention that Montreal is in Quebec, which is Canada's French-speaking region. Luckily for us though, our GCSE language skills weren't put to much of a test as everytime we tried to speak to someone in French, they immediately twigged we weren't native speakers / didn't have a clue what we were on about, and replied to us in English. Phew.

The Place Des Armes in Montreal

The city is really nice with a good mix of new buildings and skyscrapers with a lot of preserved old Victorian buildings. We wandered round the old town for a bit and had a cup of coffee and made the obligatory fridge magnet purchase (a furry mooses' head - awesome) before getting the metro to the botanical gardens. Where we spent about 20 minutes before another torrential downpour had us cowering in the rain for the next 20 minutes.

You know, I think it might be raining...

From Montreal, we drove to Montebello where we spent the night. According to Wikipedia: "The village is world famous for the Château Montebello resort, the largest log structure ever built. The resort was the host for the 1983 NATO Nuclear Planning Group, and the 1981 G7 Economic Summit." Wow! Those are some exciting stats aren't they! We did have a look at the Chateau and can confirm it was very nice. Didn't see any world leaders though.

On Sunday we continued westward to Ottawa, Canada's capital city. Apparently Ottawa was chosen as the capital for similar reasons to Canberra in Oz, in that it was a bit of a neutral choice half-way between two big rival cities (Montreal and Toronto in Canada's case). It's quite a small city and centred on the parliament building which looked rather similar to a certain parliament building in London...

Canada's (not Britain's) parliament building

We had lunch in the funky Byward Market and a brief stroll to parliament and down the Rideau Canal before getting back in the car and heading south into the USA again. We must have passed the fabled grilling of quickfire questions from the border guard ("Where ya from?", "How d'ya know each other?", "Where d'ya work?", "You're driving how far?!!" etc.) because she eventually let us pass after 5 minutes and we were back in New York State.

We made our way south and then took a right turn (i.e. west) after we'd passed the eastern shore of Lake Ontario and spent the night in Rochester, about 60 miles east of Niagara. In the morning we visited the Strong Museum which has over 500,000 pieces of assorted Americana but concentrated on toys dating from the 18th century up to the present day. We spent quite a while looking at the section on the 80's which had lots of toys that we'd had as kids. And Phil thrashed Sarah on the Atari racing game too. Get in.

From Rochester we drove along the southern shore of Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls. We managed to stumble upon a beautiful little town on the banks of the lake where we stopped for an ice cream and a fridge magnet and from where we could see the tops of some Toronto skyscrapers, including the famous CN Tower, which must have been at least 100 miles away across the water, before carrying on to Niagara.

To be honest we were kind of prepared to be underwhelmed by the falls because the guidebooks had said they were often built up to be better than they are in real-life ("the first disappointment of married life for all of those honeymooners" - the big cynics). We thought they were really impressive though - and there's a nice atmosphere about the place with lots of families and kids all excited to be there. Sure the falls themselves are not as vast as Iguazu but they still drop a long way down and the noise and force is huge. Superman certainly had a job on his hands resucing that small boy in the film!

Unlike Iguazu, Phil didn't have to take his pants of this time! Thank the lord.

We had a good look from the American side before crossing back into Canada (with a much briefer borderguard quiz). The view of the Falls is meant to be much better from the Canadian side because they face head onto to the Falls, so obviously the first thing we did was to...er...go to the cinema to see the new Batman film! We went back to the Falls after the film to see them lit up at night though and then went back for a proper day time look this morning.

Da na da na da na da na Batman...

Today (Tuesday) we drove to Toronto and have just had a brief look round so far. We're going to have more of an explore around shortly, before having dinner in the restaurant at the top of the enormous CN Tower tonight.

We've got some serious road action ahead of us after we leave Toronto though because it's the big drive around the north of the Great Lakes before dropping back down into America at the Michigan Peninsula and then onto Chicago.

Love Sarah and Phil x x

***IMPORTANT PHOTO NEWS!***

We've apparently managed to fill the 1500 capacity photo limit that World Nomads allows! So we've created a new journal page to hold all our USA and Canada pictures. So from now on, if you want to see the galleries and all the photos from North America, then you'll need to go to this page: http://journals.worldnomads.com/sarahandphilusa where you'll find the photo galleries listed down the right hand side as usual. We'll still be putting all our stories on the original site though.

New York, New York

sarahandphil — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:45:00 GMT

"Ba ba dah da da da ba ba dah da da da da... start spreading the news...." Yes, we arrived in NY early Tuesday morning and, fuelled up with all that steak and south american coffee, were ready to hit the ground running. Well, walking faster than usual anyway!

Armed with coffee and ready for a big day in the big apple

We had intended to do as much as possible in our 3 1/2 days in NY and seriously went for it, running around ticking off sights and shopping like amphetamine-crazed mad people. Anyone seeing us flying about would have thought we'd never seen a big city before but it was all excellent fun.

We started with a walk up 5th Avenue and a deli breakfast, then picked up a ticket for the city tourist buses, which had been recommended by several friends as a good way to see the main sights - all sitting in the open air.

Outside 'Radio City' - looking too cool to be hot

We thought this was a big bonus seeing as it was extremely hot and sunny, and also gave us the added erm, excitement of having to duck whenever we got close to an overhanging branch or various other obstacles that seem designed to catch out unwitting tourists. Apparently someone was seriously injured just a few weeks ago as a result of standing up to take photos just as one of those hanging yellow traffic lights approached...ouch. They may have cleaned up the crime scene here but this city is still a dangerous place to be!

The buses take various routes around uptown and downtown Manhattan and work on a hop on – hop off basis. We've been on a few of these tourist buses in vairous places on the trip now and have grown to really like them. They're a great way to get orientated and are a bit like big temptresses on wheels, giving you a taster of all the main highlights so that you want to go back for more!

Taxis heading for Grand Central Station

We started on the downtown bus, which took us around the South of Manhattan island. At this point it was about 9am and about 90 degrees. By the time we’d been on the bus an hour it had climbed to well over 100 and our heads were starting to melt. Or so it felt like. So we got off and jumped on a nice breezy cruise around the harbour, over to Ellis island, and to see a statue of some bird with a fancy head-dress...

Some bird...

There’s also an outdoor art installation on at the moment consisting of four large waterfalls positioned at various points around the harbour. It is really quite nice and was a welcome opportunity to get some relief from the heat in the form of spray. Just like the Iguazu falls all over again. Well, sort of...

We then visited an exhibition called ‘Bodies’ which is on at Seaport harbour. Well, to be more accurate, Phil visited the exhibition. Sarah had previously seen Gunther Van Hagens ‘Bodyworks’ exhibition in London, which is based on a similar plastication / dissection technique – and felt rather wobbly about the whole thing, so was happier wandering around the shops. She is however determined to get past the ‘bones’ section of the souvenir book that Phil bought one day when she is feeling strong...

After the boat trip we walked up Wall Street looking for Gordon Gecko but found Pret a Manger – it was a very special moment being reunited with our favourite sandwiches after so many months scraping by without even a bite of cheese and pickle!

We're pretty sure this stock exchange is American....

Next we got back on the bus which took us through the lower East side, and then back to Broadway, where we hoped to pick up some tickets to see Ricky Gervais, but (quelle surprise) he had sold out, so we went to see some local stand up instead. A good move!

We got six acts for our $10, four of which were really very amusing (the other two were slightly upstaged by our giant stack of nachocs, but still not awful). Also quite comedic were some of the audience, who appeared not to take to the sardonic NY style of humour, and pulled some excellent ‘we are from Texas sonny Jim and we NOT amused by your ‘clever’ jokes about southerners’ faces. Thankfully they must have left their AK47s back at the ranch and were happy just to shoot some evil glances and go. A fun evening’s entertainment all round!

Next day we went for some ‘proper’ culture and hit the awesome Metropolitan Museum of Art for most of the morning. Then we chilled out with a salad at the boating lake in Central Park for a couple of hours before carrying on on the bus through Harlem.

On the roof of the Metrolopitan Museum

Sarah with some crazy sculptures on the Met roof

John Lennon memorial, Bethesda fountain, and political badges in Central Park

Evening was spent browsing the shops – especially the (big!) Apple store. The queues were so long though - estimated at 3 hours by one shop assistant – that we decided to go for dinner first, then as the shop is open 24 hours, we went back at midnight to make our purchases – by which time the queue had subsided - yay!

So Sarah is the proud owner of a new iPod touch (like an i-phone without the phone) – a replacement for the one that was stolen in China back in February. In the apparent absence of any internet cafes around here (maybe everyone has Internet at home??), this is currently acting as our main point of Internet access at the moment as it has wifi – but we can't upload pictures with it, hence the un-decorated look of this entry - sorry. Also it is a bit fiddly to use, so apologies to those of you who have received more illiterate than usual emails in the past few days!

Sarah and her new purchases

Back to NY anyway, and Thursday we had another morning of art – MoMA this time – which was also really fantastic. Lots of stuff we recognised, lots more we didn't, and fantastic shops! Then we spent the afternoon looking around Tribeca, SoHo and Greenwich village and doing a spot of shopping.

Now those of you that know NY and know Sarah will appreciate that this afternoon was never going to make for a feature in ‘effective fiancial management magazine' and indeed we came back with a tad more than our usual strict two fridge magnet per city souvenir budget allows for. Oops.

However, we were not spree-ed out yet, and managed yet more shopping in the trendy meatpacking district on Friday morning (well, someone has to give a lift to the faltering US economy don't they?) before catching a train to Stamford, CT, where we picked up our Toyota Rav 4* to begin our loooooooooooooooooooooong road trip to LA.

We made a good start, getting straight on Interstate 87 on Friday afternoon and putting the 350 miles to Canada behind us that evening. We stopped for a realy gorgeous dinner at Lake George in the Airondacks, where some lucky New Yorkers get to hang out on with their boats at the weekend, then overnighted at a Motel on the border ready to visit Montreal yesterday. We’ll have to tell you about that in our next entry – when we’ll also try and get some photos up… in the mean time, we're off to Taco Bell for a cheap dinner!

Love to all,

Sarah and Phil x x

*Bit of a result this since we had booked the much cheaper Ford Focus. We haven’t had to pay any more yet, so are just hoping that no-on tells Hertz…

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***IMPORTANT PHOTO NEWS!***

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