It's the end of the world as we know it...

New York, NY. Our final destination, the final countdown. An overnight bus ride from Toronto brought back overlanding memories from the Madventure group as we crossed the line from Canada to New York State. This was nearly it, the end of our 9 month trip.

When we did arrive into the city, we made our way to our hotel and settle into our room. A spacious king suite on the 20th floor overlooked the Chrysler building, 2 blocks from the empire state, it was our miracle on 34th street.

As newsies in town, and as an Englishman in New York, me and my girl sounded very out of place with the new Jersey boy's accents, but we did find a lot of places to eat. Like Canada, they love their food here in New York but unlike Hawaii, they don't eat spam a lot. A cry of mamma mia lured us into an Italian and we had some delicious pizza!

We visited the statue of liberty which all Americans seemed to wonder at how elegant and peaceful it is. I think she looks passive aggressive.
But anyway, Ellis island was an interesting immigration and medical assessment centre of the thousands of immigrants searching for a better life in America!

We wandered around central park with its plastic ice skating rink and saw the touts and the cyclo rickshaws. Central park must be wicked to stomp around in the summertime!

We watched Chicago the musical on Broadway and wandered though Times Square. This was amazing!

On saturday night, our final evening, we went up the Rockefeller centre and sat starry eyed watching the sun set over new York and on our trip.

The next day, we got up easy like Sunday morning to go the airport before finally flying home!

What a crazy adventure but this episode is now over! No one country is the same and each is amazing in its own way. This has truly been a trip of a lifetime and we have had an absolute blast!

We have driven over 50,000kms,
Taken nearly 20,000 photographs,
Visited 29 countries,
Used over 20 different type of transport,
Been up to an altitude of 5250 metres above sea level,
And down to 18 metres below,
Experienced heights of 56°C,
And lows of -22°C,
Had 14 flights in total plus one in a helicopter,
Experienced the same day twice as we crossed the date line,
Visited 3 world wonders (depending on your list),
Time travelled to the year 1392 in Iran, and back to 2140 inTibet,
Explored some of the oldest cities in the world and some of the newest,
From the rich in Singapore to the poverty in Delhi,
Numerous ticks off the bucket list,
Enough adrenaline pumping activities for a lifetime,
Loads of people met and friendships made,
Millions of memories,
And one God who we are incredibly thankful to, who created this all.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Eastern delights

Western Canada had far exceeded our expectations, despite the insinuation that I nearly ended my husband's life on a snowmobile! So as we headed out East we were excited what it had to hold.

Landing in Toronto airport was a different experience in itself. There was a heavy snow storm in full pelt when we landed which meant that we hadn't realised that we'd even come out of the clouds, everything was white! Thankfully despite the storm we were picked up by friends of the Williamson family, Jim and Valerie, and had a fantastic time with them and loved being back in a home.

Downtown Toronto is a different place in the winter, the lake was still mainly frozen and the fresh dusting of snow made everything glow. We wandered along the harbour front and watched people skate seamlessly on the ice rink, and therefore decided that it was probably best we didn't try. It became a city of firsts as we headed to the Art Gallery with Jim and Val. There were quite a few random exhibits on display which showed our ignorance about art, as we were not quite sure exactly what we should be seeing! But it was good fun. We have realised that for Canadians and North Americans eating out is common place and they have such an array of options. We'd loved Sushi so much in Vancouver that we had a Sushi buffet! Yummy! Later that evening we crowded into the air Canada centre and watched a NBA basketball game. Sport events are big occasions in North America as well, the bar for the entertainment was set with indoor fireworks to start off the events!

Whilst in the east we headed to Niagara falls for the day. Due to the velocity and power with which the water is flowing, the American and Horseshoe falls themselves were not frozen, but huge chunks of ice were floating in the river and adjacent cliffs. It was stunning! We had the opportunity to meet up with a couple, whom we'd travelled with in Madventure. We stayed with them for a night and had a fantastic time reminiscing. The next day we headed to the slopes!

We wanted to learn how to snowboard. This proved to be yet another activity which people make look incredibly easy, its not! Having both your feet clamped to a slippy board, which is generally (unless you've gone way wrong) pointing down hill.  It was like learning to walk again, the easiest way to stop yourself is to sit down! It does mean that your bum becomes somewhat cold! With regular hot chocolates, encouragement from Jim and Val as they elegantly skiied passed us and determination on our behalf we spent the majority of the day up and down the slope. And we're still rubbish! Oh well, we'll just to have another winter holiday to practice!

Before we left Canada we were able to meet up with another cousin from the Williamson side. Alex has truly met more people than some other family members now. We had such an encouraging and great time with Lynda and Ed and it was lovely to hear the NI accent in real life for a change. We finished off our stay with a St.Paddy's cake Jim and Val had been given (crazy Canadians!).  We left Toronto by Greyhound bus, in honour of the first section of the trip, the last leg possible we did overland. Off to New York then!

Rockin' into winter!

Hawaii was pretty warm and as we waited at the airport to fly to Canada, one of the last things we did was to eat some ice cream to cool us down. This was in an airport with not too many walls and it was in the evening! 30°C was normal during the days, dropping at night.

You can imagine our shock when we touched down in Vancouver, Canada, amid snow and cold! It was very cold and damp but we were picked up by an old friend from uni, Ivan. We had planned to stay with him for a couple of days and we met Kelsey, his fiancée. First on our agenda was clothes shopping as our Tibetan thermals weren't cutting it! Waterproof boots and ski jackets later, we could feel our feet again.

Something we didn't realise, but Vancouver has amazing food. Because of the influx of Asians, there is a lot of delicious Asian food! And Ivan and Kelsey made sure we sampled the best places! We enjoyed amazing sushi and even had maple pancakes on Shrove Tuesday! Delicious!

Vancouver is a city that spends most of its time in a rain cloud and looking a bit grey, but we managed to see it on a clear day and there is a beautiful mountain backdrop!

But it does rain! And when we went to Stanley park, we got soaked! But Vancouver is known as the warmest and wettest part of Canada, so we decided to head east to drier climates! We hopped on a train and enjoyed an amazing 20 hour journey winding through the Rockies amongst blizzards and thick snow! It all looked lovely from the inside of the train. Until we had to get out!

Jasper was -10°C when we arrived and by evening had dropped to -17°C. Did we mention we were used to hot sun and beaches?! We were staying in this little log cabin buried in several feet of snow and it kept snowing solidly for over 48 hours! So, we thought we would do as the locals do, and go cross country skiing! Very good fun but fairly tiring! We weren't very good and definitely had a few wobbles!

So after our day skiing, where we saw a wild wolf, we thought we would go for a little walk as it had nearly stopped snowing! But as we were walking along the road, we bumped into a heard of about 40 wild elk! And after we showed them who was boss by winning the staring contest, they let us continue our wander!

One of the highlights of the Rockies has to be taking UNESCO's top inland road trip in the world, through the icefields parkway down to Banff! There are mountains everywhere! As in literally everywhere! And where there aren't mountains, there are glaciers or frozen waterfalls, lakes and rivers!

We love Banff though. Set in the bow valley, and enjoying spectacular scenery, there are so many amazing things to do. We hiked through a canyon and found at the end of it a frozen waterfall with ice climbers scaling the icy heights, we went snowshoeing at lake Louise and built a snowman on a frozen lake, we went husky dog sledding through Banff and Yoho national parks and went snowmobiling into the high alipine, with even enough time to enjoy a BBQ in the snow! Oh, we didn't even mention relaxing in the hot springs with a mountain view or summiting sulphur mountain for spectacular views over Banff and the whole valley!

But let's get back to the snowmobiling. We were sharing one machine which is amazing because the whole objective for the person driving is to try and throw the passenger off! But it all started out badly for Gill as pretty early on, she ran into the person in front and jammed the snowmobile into the back of theirs! All good. But when we had one snowmobile each and were racing around in the deep snow, Gill managed to roll it! So after digging it out whilst standing in waist deep snow, we were underway again both on the same machine. We then had a very near miss with a tree as Gill sped down a hill and only just made the turn in time. Up high on the mountain, we stopped and had a delicious BBQ with smores whilst relaxing in the snow and sunshine! The next bit was scarier though. Gill again was driving and we were zooming along the mountain edge with a good 150 metre near vertical drop on one side and the path was only just over the width of the machine. So zooming along and Gill succeeds in the challenge. But not only did she manage to throw me off, but also herself as we hit a bump a little too quickly and we were both cleanly flung from the snowmobile towards the edge. As we were on snow it was a soft landing and both our immediate thoughts were have we totally wrecked the snowmobile (and our remaining bank balance!) by letting it plunge over the cliff! But it was OK, it has just rolled to a stop as thankfully we were on the straight and Gills quick reflexes hit the "cut the engine" button as she was falling! We quickly caught up with the others in our group and tried to pretend nothing had happened but we were caught out as we were covered in snow!! Very funny and the only injury was a hole in my trousers! Naturally, my driving was faultless...

Just before we headed away from the Rockies, we went to Calgary and went to the Olympic park from 1988. We saw the cool runnings bobsleigh run and sat in the sled they used in the filming of the Disney film! We also climbed to the top of the Calgary tower and watched the sun set over the Rockies in the distance. Stunning.

We had so many amazing experiences here in the Rockies and western Canada that actually we could write a lot more but I'm sure you would all get bored! We would definitely love to come back but we still have a lot more of Canada to see. We're still going east!