Well, let's start at the beginning...we enjoyed a final pint on home soil in the airport with the folks before saying our final goodbyes! Not too many tears, even our Mam managed to hold it together! Then we whizzed off up the escalator and we were on our way...

Once we were on the first flight, we hung around on the tarmac for what seemed like ages before we took off. We thought that the delay of about half an hour might mean we would be tight for time for our connecting flight to JFK and we were proved right when one of the flight attendants came to have a word! 'You're off to New York? Someone from Express Connections will meet you to get you to your next flight!' We were then moved forward to the second row so that we could make a run for it! The guy that met us was brilliant - as we charged through Terminal 5 like we were on an episode of Airline, he told us that he'd already covered about six miles that day! Without him, we wouldn't have made it, so thanks!

The flight over was comfortable, the drinks and food flowed and the fact that we won't be back for a whole year finally began to sink in! Managed to watch a film (The Unwanted with Liam Neeson, 6 out of 10!) and an episode of Family Guy before sleep took over. Woke up as we began to descend into New York...

Immigration wasn't as scary as we thought - we remembered not to smile as we had our photo and fingerprints taken and we made it through! We were more worried that although we had been rushed to our flight, our bags wouldn't have been so lucky. Fortunately, Laura spotted hers straight away and mine followed shortly after. Then we were out into the city on our shuttle ride, exhausted but glad to be finally on our way!

Our first sight of New York at night was of Harlem as we dropped a few other people off on our way to Balet's apartment. Our friendly driver told us his life story on the way - how he first came to New York in the early 1980s to drive taxis to put all of his kids through school and college. He also told us how much Harlem has improved over the last 30 years and it definitely seemed like a safe, modern suburb from what we saw from the window!

We finally arrived at Balet's at 1am New York time after 13 hours of travelling! We were met by the doorman of the building, who seemed quite suspicious of us and asked who we were staying with, before demanding our passports and driving licenses. Just as Laura was about to hand them over, he cracked up laughing - Balet had told him to give us a hard time when we arrived and we should have guessed!

After bringing Balet up to date with all of the news from home, we finally crashed out, exhausted after a hectic first day.

We've started - time to hit the sights tomorrow...