We leapt off our final Greyhound bus of the trip, leaving our trusty pillows in the luggage compartment for some other weary travellers to find and treasure: we had finally arrived in New York and it was time to see what all the fuss was about. It has a lot to live up to: could it beat Sydney, Fiji, the Thai islands, Queenstown, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, San Diego and San Francisco to make it into the top spot?

It was an inauspicious start, however, as we found that our 'boutique' hostel was as far from luxury as Hong Kong is in distance from New York. Still, it was no worse than most we've stayed in over the past six months and, what the hell, we're in New York! We checked into our dorm and found it was already 10pm; in the city that never sleeps this was more than enough time to introduce ourselves to Times Square and the Empire State Building.

The bright lights and huge crowds in Times Square seemed strangely familiar, even to a first timer like myself; the place was still humming with activity, so we thought we'd grab the chance to go up the Empire State Building at an 'off peak' time, or so we thought. Nearly an hour after buying our ticket, however, we finally made it to the 86th floor of New York's tallest building, but it immediately became worth the wait as we took in the awesome views of the big apple.

Continuing the tour of NY's big hitters, we caught a return ferry journey to Staten Island to see the magnificent Statue of Liberty in all its glory, shimmering in the sun. Ever since 9/11, the torch has been off limits to tourists and the opportunity of peering up through the middle of the old lady seemed like a poor substitute to us, so we stuck to just sailing past the awesome landmark for free. All the while we chuckled to ourselves as we saw the people who had paid good money on tourist boats to get the same views that we were getting for free.

After a quick lunchbreak, we were soon hobnobbing it with the financial heavyweights on Wall Street: The Stock Exchange, replete with a procession of stressed brokers escaping the bedlam of the trading floor for a quick smoke outside; JP Morgan Building, not even labelled, as they were so big back in the day - JP Morgan was apparently the President's financial guru back at the start of the 20th century; Trump Tower and the rest of some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

The next stop of our NY tour de force took us to Ground Zero and the 9/11 museum. A very moving place and even more so when accompanied with the museum's great narration of the tragedy and the continuing regeneration of the area. The city seems to have now decided upon the final spec for the Freedom Towers; with what looks like four new buildings and commemorative waterfalls in the foundations of the Twin Towers, to be completed by 2011.

The evening was another chance to re-acquaint ourselves with the baseball, so we went to ESPN, the premier sports bar in probably the world - there were roughly 15 baseball games going on while we ate, along with the US Olympic basketball team. We followed the Red Sox game mostly, while watching NY's own Yankees, the Sox's biggest rivals, getting creamed by the opposition, much to our satisfaction. The best seats in the house, which we unfortunately couldn't snag, were a collection of Lazyboys. What a great way to spend an evening; imagine the queue outside for Superbowl Sunday!

Luckily, we still had beautiful weather by our third day in New York, so decided to venture into Central Park. It was wonderful to wander through what we both considered to be the best public park we've ever visited, and at times it was easy to forget we were in one of the World's busiest cities. However, the sight of hundreds of skyscrapers peeping over the trees was a good reminder.

Having gone six weeks without a live baseball game, we thought it only right to go and watch New York Mets V San Diego Padres that evening. Not only was the Mets' stadium more impressive than the Padres', but their performance was more impressive too and once again our favourite second team, the Padres, had to settle for defeat.

Thursday was our last full day of the trip and we were sure it'd be a while before we had such glorious weather, so the morning was spent once again enjoying Central Park, with a spot of sunbathing. We were tempted by the impressive exterior of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but this time the sunshine won against the air conditioning.

Our fellow dormers had been to a Broadway show the previous evening and couldn't have recommended the experience more highly. However, for us, it did involve queueing for at least an hour for the opportunity to purchase half price tickets. Even without protest, I was sure that Kev wouldn't have appreciated being taken to see Legally Blonde or The Little Mermaid musicals, so we settled on Monty Python's Spamalot. A delicious Indian meal before the performance stood to make it a very enjoyable evening. Despite my reservations, the musical surpassed all our expectations and had us laughing all the way through.

It was an early start on our final day in order to fit in all the things we'd yet to see. We started with a great American breakfast at Metro Diner before heading downtown to see the Brooklyn Bridge. Unfortunately, the weather couldn't stay perfect for the whole week and by the time we emerged from the subway it was pouring with rain. Undetered, we marched out into the wet and began our walk across the bridge to get some of our last photos.

Shopping was second on our list and ended up taking rather longer than we'd anticipated. With Kev dispatched to purchase his Hugo Boss shoes from Bloomingdales, I took advantage of the bad weather and headed for Abercrombie & Fitch on 5th Avenue which on previous viewings always had a queue of roughly 100 people waiting to get in. My expectations had been a bit premature as I was still forced to queue in the rain, but before long I was amongst the numerous shoppers all hoping to get their hands on the surprisingly cheap designer brand.

With numerous shopping bags weighing us down, we'd had to sacrifice a visit to Greenwich Village as there wasn't enough time, so we hopped on the subway to get back to the hostel in time to catch our taxi to the airport. Before long we realised that rather than heading towards the hostel, we were in fact destined for Queens. After what seemed like a very long journey back, we had to run to ensure the taxi wouldn't leave without us, in actual fact, I ran and Kev took a detour to pick up a Subway sandwich.

With designer gear and Subway in hand, we were ready to make our final leg of the trip and headed for home.

Kev & Rosa