I'm sat in Eileen's Special Cheesecake having just eaten a very nice Oreo cheesecake. It's less than 24 hours until I leave US soil and return home, and I'm starting to accept that this really is the end. I may not like it, but the fact remains that I have to go home and face the proverbial music once more. I've spent the past two weeks trying to deny that it is happening and now it's on my doorstep. And it sucks. Friends at home, if you're reading this, I am ver...

I'm a good way into this train journey to Niagara Falls and the aircon is freezing. I think it's just a ploy to get me to buy more coffee. Of course the fact that I'm only wearing shorts and T-shirt probably doesn't help either. I have no food this time round, so I also have to enjoy the luxury food of Amtrak this once. And when I say luxury food, I actually mean a Twix. That's all I managed to get away with until Amtrak dropped me across the border in what is m...

Ok, confession. I have literally only just noticed this: New York, New York. The city so good they named it twice, is not just from a Frank Sinatra song but also named as such because it's in the state of New York! Hence in the same way that Houston is named Houston, Texas, New York is named New York, New York. Somebody please tell me they also didn't know that... My last few hours in Philly were possibly more eventful than I anticipated. I had to find some repl...

So the one place I hadn't planned to go until about two days before I got there turned out to be a really good time! Hooray for spontaneity! I spent the whole morning in the Washington Downtown Hostel after deciding it was logistically too difficult to actually get anything done in the spare two or three hours until my train to Philly. So I borrowed Reptar, Emily's giant laptop, and did some more admin while we watched The Princess Bride from the very front of h...

Note: Washington, DC is not actually in Virginia. I know this, but offexploring won't let me start a blog in the US with no state. So there... It had to happen sometime. I'd spent the most part of my Amtraking life I'm relative bliss as the routes I was taking were pretty much deserted. No so on the east coast! I got off the train after spending a good few hours sat next to a man more than twice my width. Even Amtrak seats struggle to contain that. I shouldn't b...