Our bus journey down to Seattle was interesting! It took a few hours longer than expected but it was comfortable enough. We were dropped off in downtown Seattle and had to make our way to our hostel. We chose to take the public buses because they are much cheaper but it made it interesting when carrying all of our belongings - especially with Sam on her crutches! Luckily it was only two blocks to the bus stop and not far when we got off the bus. We even got the ride for free because the kind driver didn't want our $5 bill. They only accept the correct money and i think he sympathised with us!

The hostel is very nice with some crazy people to help run it! We had just two nights back in Seattle before flying over to New York and we spent a day back in the centre doing a little shopping. We shared a taxi with one other guy to the airport so we only paid $15 and we didn't have any luck seeking out extra leg room, although Sam got pushed to our gate in a wheelchair which meant we skipped all the long queues going through the scanners.

The planes were superb. The entire fleet is less than a year old and they're the most comfortable planes we've ever had. We also had mostly excellent views of the states as we went from Seattle to San Francisco and then onto New York totalling around 6 hours in the air. We even had some good views of the New York skyline at night as we came in to land.

Ade was therer waiting for us as we touched down but, unfortunately, our tent wasn't! It had been vigourously removed from Sams backpack, breaking one of her straps, but the airline could take no responsibility because it was a separate piece of luggage even though it was securely attached.

We found a shuttle bus to taxi us to our hostel but we had to go through almost every other district on Manhatten Island including Harlem and Upper East Side where on one block there would be many different gangs of people but on the next block would be gangs of the NYPD! By 2am we arrived at our 'less-than-pretty' hostel but it'll do just fine. The location is superb as it sits just off of Times Square.

For the whole week, New York was hot. It rained twice, was sunny mostly but it was always humid and muggy! This doesn't help when spending most of the day walking around. It gets worse too when you go underground to wait for the tube but the trains themselves are air-conditioned thankfully. This was our main form of transport and proved to be the best way as you can get to anywhere via the underground network.

Much of our week was spent shopping or, at least, looking! We did come away with a few more additions to our luggage but not as much as we thought we would! Lots of the places were fairly expensive even for the US and the others didn't have much that we liked. It was still interesting looking around the many different areas such as 5th Avenue, Macy's (worlds biggest department store), Bloomingdales, Soho, Greenwich Village and many more.

We managed to fit in some sight seeing too believe it or not, beginning with the former site of the World Trade Centre towers which is now a construction site for the replacement buildings. There is a moving tribute to the firemen nearby but its hard to imagine the destruction of 7 years ago just by walking around. Catching the ferry over to Staten Island was another free tourist activity. Staten Island doesn't hold much interest but the ferry takes you right past the Statue of Liberty for decent photo opportunities without paying to go to the island itself.

We visitied New Yorks financial centre - Wall St - and also scaled the Rockefeller Tower. The views of the city were superb from 70 floors up including the empire state building and the huge central park - which also earned a couple of visits during the week. It's a busy park but still offers a getaway for the millions of people flowing through the city. Sam and I got ourselves 1/2 price tickets to see Chicago one evening and, because of Sams ankle, we didn't even have to queue for hours to get them! We weren't quite sure what to expect but it was a fantastic show and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.

We had given ourselves a bigger budget for New York so we could eat out every night. Taking full advantage of this we ate in Chinatown, Little Italy and Times Square sampling much of the various cuisines! Alan treated us to our last meal on our trip and we all had a big juicy steak!

New York was a busy week for us and returned us to the state of mind we've been in for the whole of our adventure after a mellow Canadian trip. This meant we were very tired at the end!! Despite this, we still didn't sleep on our flight home because we managed to get an upgrade to premium economy with all the perks.

Returning home has come at the right time. 12 months away was just about enough and we were very excited to be returning to friends and family. I'm sure we'll think differently when we're working again but for now we're happy to be back.

This completes our journey and what a journey its been. 11 Countries, 367 days, 14 flights, 5 cars (brought & rented), around 20,000 miles on the road, lots and lots of pennies (!), 1 emergency, 2 haircuts, 1000's of faces, 2 backpacks, 51 blogs, 12 hours of video and 18,000 photos (seriously!). Thank you to everyone who's contributed to the site and left us messages along the way - they've kept us going and given us a lift when we needed it.