Well blogfans, after sleeping in 68 locations, visiting 16 countries, spending 325 hours (almost 14 whole days) on buses, taking 10 flights and driving 3,460 miles across the USA we have reached the promised land, the emerald city, our final destination, New York City!

So I will bring you up to speed since Brad's last blog from Charleston. The snow finally found us hiding in the deep South where they haven't had snow for over 10 years and it has been with us ever since. We left Charleston and headed to North Carolina, to the beautiful city of Asheville, on the advice of the hairdressers! So much for taking the 'safe' route through the snow, we find ourselves in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains! We laughed in the face of these mountains which were nowhere near as high as those we encountered in Bolivia and Peru!

In Asheville, desperate to avoid fast food, we had an amazing sushi (which has been a bit of an addiction for us for the last week or so) and went to an adorable arthouse cinema to see the movie Crazy Heart - Jeff Bridges is fantastic! After Asheville we did our sums and realised if we were going to make it to everywhere else in our plan we would have to put in a serious drive. This took us 500 miles North to Pittsburgh, Penn state. We spent our romantic Valentines Day evening eating take away in a snowy motel and watching Top Gear and Gavin and Stacey re-runs (perfect!)

The next day we planned to spend the morning exploring Pittsburgh but it was absolutely freezing!! Our toes were numb and the snow was heaped up so much you couldn't see what was road and what was pavement. Plus it was a bank holiday in the USA so all the normal people were at home celebrating with their families and the weirdos were out in force. Pittsburgh was lovely but an hour was plenty of time to discover it!

After there we headed to Niagara Falls, which was simply stunning! The mist from the falls had frozen to all the trees and was stuck to one side of them which gave a really strange ice effect. Everything was free to see as it was off season and there were barely any tourists, so we had a stroll around and took lots of snaps, then did the same on the Canada side.

After Niagara we did a whistle stop tour round the lake to Toronto, which is a great city! We managed to squeeze in shopping, more sushi, a few catch up drinks with our pals from the inca Trail, Allison and Matt and a Raptors basketball game. The basketball was so much fun! it is a total sensory overload, there is constant music, lights, dancing, food and then the basketball is fast-paced too! It was funny though, a lot of people sitting near us seemed to stop talking while the mascot was performing, or the cheerleaders were dancing, but strike up conversations as soon as the game resumed! Unfortunately the Raptors lost to the Memphis Grizzlies (bad times) but they scored over 100 points so everyone in the crowd got a free slice of pizza (good times!) It seemed everyone was happy with this and spirits were high as we left the Air Canada centre.

Our last destination is currently Brad's number one city, Boston! We had so much fun there, it is a beautiful city, with loads of history! Its big enough to be exciting but small enough to explore on foot. We did the Freedom Trail, which involved following a red trail round the city for 2.5 miles. It's like a giant scavenger hunt and on every corner you bump into confused tourists with maps trying to work out how to get to the next historic monument! I guess the Boston city council don't have a 'red paint' budget because at times the road had obviously been re-covered and the red trail had disappeared! We also ate some amazing seafood which Boston is famous for.

Finally, we drove our gorgeous Chevy to NYC this morning with Brad putting in a Herculaen effort on the driving, New York drivers are, without a doubt, clinically insane! This afternoon we planned to explore the East Village where we are staying, and Greenwich village, but ended up covering all of downtown, including Ground Zero, Wall Street, Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho and more. Tomorrow we are heading to the Statue of Liberty and in the evening are catching a play on Broadway, recommended by Mr Cox, which is starring Christopher Walken (very exciting!)

So bloggettes, we may be in touch one more time for a reflective blog, depends how much you beg for more, but if not, we'll be seeing you all in a matter of days/weeks and will recount a million and one tales in great detail!

Until next time......xxxxx