Wow, New York already - well technically Long Island but most definitely a part of New York State. Took us a little longer to get here than the traditional seven hour ride from London but we had fun on the way that you can't get from a packet of freeze dried nuts and a tiny bottle of red wine. Strangely enough the final leg of our journey was the first time we had any significant delay, a combination of sick passengers, mechanical problems and a big man with a bad temper contributing to a five hour delay and an arrival past midnight. This left us open to attack by the sharks posing as New York taxi firms. Ten minutes of ignoring fat men with badly stained shirts shouting prices at us earned a huge discount and we found ourselves at 2am arriving and collapsing into bed.

A lie in would have been understandable but it was the 4th of July so we crawled out of bed for a short reunion with my cousins, aunt and boyfriends / girlfriends / husbands before party administration took hold and we found ourselves clearing up and filling five chest coolers with beer. As the token Brit at a 4th of July party I was bound to get a little bit of good natured abuse but then that is what my cousins are for. The rest of the party guests were kinder except they all seemed to think I sounded like the Beatles (possibly due to my Sgt Pepper beard I had specially for the day), well as long as they did't mean Ringo I guess I can go with that. Once evening fell we moved outside again for a crazy mashup of different amateur firework displays blooming from gardens all over the neighbourhood completely undeterred by a soft warm rain shower.

Luckily 4th of July fell on a Friday so we had two full days to recover and consume all the leftovers before everyone dispersed. We only went out twice in the two days, once for a run to fool ourselves that we were healthy and once to a pool hall to play games and drink beer which completely ruined any recovery we had made in our first trip. Overall we just hung out with the family, played cards showed several hours of photos to various people and reacquainted ourselves. It felt different this time though, usually at this point when everyone is preparing to go back to their normal life it will be several months or years before we can all get together again. Now we are scattering across the city but will be close enough to go around for dinner, go to concerts together and share normal rather than holiday life. It is going to be a great comfort to have some family around as we try to establish ourselves in the city and hopefully it will make the UK not seem so far away.

So now we are going through all the bags we have to take into the city and deciding what is vital right now and what can stay in Long Island. This is officially the last day of our trip, tomorrow we are going to be in our new sublet looking for jobs and trying to work out all the things you need to know in a new area. We have both found ourselves getting a little melancholy and nervous which is to expected I guess. I recognized the feeling but couldn't place it until recently. It feels like the last day of the summer holidays when you were a kid going to a new school where you don't know the rules and everyone else will know each other. For a while at least we will be the outsiders, we might as well buy 'I Love NYC' t-shirts to highlight our naiveté. We can be comforted by the friends and family we have around us and of course we have each other which has worked everywhere else in the world. So here we go, lets take a deep breath and plunge in, everyone keep your fingers crossed for us and get yourselves over for a visit before the oil price makesrowing the only affordable transatlantic option.

Love A & R

Ps. Tune in for our final blog (July 15th) to find out about our transition into New York City life.Trust me, it's anything but normal.