Our first stop in America was New York. Our first encounter was, of course, with immigration at the airport and we were pleasantly surprised when we were greated by a very friendly officer. Our first night was spent in Harlem which, again, was very surprising. We were expecting to feel very unsafe and out of place but we felt quite the opposite. We went to a local 'soul food' restaurant called Sylvias where we feasted on an entree sized chicken wings and a main sized ribs with black-eyed peas and collared greens. Although we didn't order 2 mains we still struggled to finished the meal as the portions here are so big. The next day we ventured over to New Jersey to find our hotel which was to be our home for the next 4 nights. After about 1.5 hours of walking (with backpacks on) we managed to cover about 10kms and finally found our hotel. It wasn't in a far out location we just had some bad directions which took us the very very long way round. The weather in NY was pretty miserable but bearable. It was overcast and drizzling with rain most days. We visited Time Square, went and watched Phantom of the Opera and visited Soho, Noho, Tribeca, Little Italy and China town. On our last day we planned to go to the WTC and then head up to Central Park. So we went to see the site of the Twin Towers and lucky for us there was a fun run on to remember all the fire fighters lost and so there was free burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches and donuts. We took advantage of the free food and then started walking up to Central Park. We didn't quite make it that far though as we 'dropped in' to a shop called Century 21. 4 hours and $250 later we emerged and it was now 6:30pm so we skipped Central Park all together. Oh well, the weather was bad anyway and we have both been before.

Next stop - Chicago. We arrived in Chicago 3 nights ago and we are staying with Trent's friends Adam and Lindsay. We are having a fabulous time here. We went to our first baseball game and what a game it was. We went and watched the Chicago White Sox win there way into the playoff for the 2008 world series so the crowd was wild. Chicago is such a beautiful city with lush green parks, tree lined streets and it is situated on the magnificant Lake Michagan so it even has a beach. It's main park, Lincoln Park, right in the middle of the city has a free zoo which we visited 2 days in a row. We saw giraffes, lions, gorillas, snakes, polar bears, penguins and even kangaroos. The highlights were the polar bears as we could watch them swimming from the glass observatory. Trent had his head right up against the glass so i could try and take a photo and the polar bear swam right up to him and tried to attack his head. It was a little freaky. Then Trent had a moment with the big male gorilla. Out of all the 20 or so people stading up again the glass the gorilla come right up to Trent and looked at him eye to eye. Maybe the Gorilla though he was one of his kind, after all he is almost as hairy!!! Sorry Trent.