Day 365 / 365

DW - Wow! That's it! Game Over, Man! Today is our last day on the road. To summarise, here's Jodie...

JB - Where did the time go? A whole year of adventure whizzed by us. Now the challenge is to get to JFK airport with three bags, yes I said three!!! You just can't come to New York and not shop!

It has been a whirl-wind year with so many exciting places and crazy moments, scary border crossings, yummy food, beautiful scenery and brilliant people, I will miss it all so much, but I am very excited to come home. This has been a year of such variation and yes cheesy to say but it has also made me appreciate what I have at home, especially wardrobes and hangers.....ha ha only joking folks.

From New York City

It has been great for us to hear from all who have emailed us on the way, and a little scarey to hear our friends getting married, having babies, moving towns etc, we did think of staying away in case it was catching!! : ) Just hearing whats happening at home has made us feel somewhat not forgotten on our travels.

From New York City

If anyone thought "wouldn't it be great to travel", then I definitely would say to you DO IT! We were surprised how easy it is to just pull up somewhere and find accommodation, how people do help you out, and how much fun it is getting it wrong and laughing about it later.

DW - What a year it's been... we've done so much I can't even get my head around it. Arriving back in the UK makes it the 14th country we've been to during 2006, and the strangest thing is it's the first time we've been in England all year! It's going to be awesome seeing family and friends again, and it's been great keeping you guys updated and getting emails back from you. Not sure how people did all this travel stuff in the old days, but in the 21st century it's not been too tricky. OK, maybe tricky at times, but generally alright.

We're staying at Trish and Pete's who are kindly putting up with us. We will try to get round to see everyone, but it could take a while, what with no vehicles. If you need us, best off dropping us an email and we'll get back to you, which again could take a while, what with no mobile phone.

Anyways, see you guys soon, and thanks for following us.

From New York City

Darren and Jodie, 2006
xxx

New Yoik, New Yoik

... And where people say "cwa-fee" instead of "coffee". It's all true.

We arrived in our lovely hotel in NYC the other day, which compared to some places we've been in, is fairly palatial. Jodie is over the moon, as it's got a bathtub in it! Imagine that, ay, bathtubs.

From New York City

So far in New York, we have wandered around a lot, checked out all the shop windows which are all very impressive with the Christmas stuff, and attempted to go shopping a number of times. This usually results in me getting stressed out (no idea why we decided it would be a good idea to come to the shopping capital of the world at this time of year, there were more people in Macy's yesterday than the population of China), and Jodie returning with far more shoes than she originally went out with. All of this is related to something known only as 'Nine West". I have no idea what that means.

From New York City

We've seen quite a few of the sights here already, with a few more to do over the next few days. The weather is behaving itself, with today a balmy 15C and sunny sunshine, which is apparently far warmer than it should be, and a lot warmer than home.

From New York City

Christmas Day is now fully planned out - starting off with Champers for breakfast, a stroll around Central Park, then 4 course Christmas Meal back at the cosy hotel. Sounds great, but won't be as good as mum's cooking of course :(

From New York City

Our only concern at the moment is... the end... of the trip! It's all very scary stuff, so we'll avoid thinking about it until we absolutely have to. Which will be when we're heading to the airport on the 26th no doubt. Yikes!

San Diego (Final West Coast Crew)

We've been in San Diego for a few days now. Mainly, it's been shopping but yesterday we hired out bikes and went exploring. Everything was fine with this, same as back home really, apart from trying to work out whereabouts in the road we were supposed to be cycling.We first went to Balboa Park. After a quick mooch about there, we then headed off see USS Midway, which as JB says, is a "Big Boat", others would call it an Aircraft Carrier.

From San Diego

I was very pleased. There was a lot of military stuff on there which was not only interesting but also quite dangerous looking. On the flight deck we were able to look at many planes normally seen only in films, such as Top Gun, and Iron Eagle, and Iron Eagle II (Ok, I struggled with remembering the name of other great aircraft films). It was brilliant! Although I think Jodie would have been happier left in one of the shops back in downtown San Diego.

From San Diego

Today we went out for a tour of the San Diego area, by a friend we made during a previous tour in New Zealand, called Amanda, who has lived here for ages. After a great day of driving around and seeing stuff in what is still pretty good, warm, sunny weather we then headed to....

From San Diego

... the Kansas City Barbecue! Which is where they filmed the 'Sleazy Bar Scene' in TOP GUN! Back in 1985! Wow, if I didn't feel old then, I do now. We headed in for an obligatory pint and photo, and said goodbye to Amanda after a great day of her touring expertise, but were unable to leave for a bit as the barman kept refilling our drinks. 5 drinks and a T-Shirt later we made it out. LA tomorrow for a quick tour before heading east to New Yoik!

More photos of our recent exploits can be viewed here.

San Diego

We're now in San Diego which is very chilled out. Seems to be pretty well set up for drinking and eating (enormous food only) and we're in Gaslamp area which is in the middle of everything. Lots of Jazz Bars and Ice Cream places.

The other thing here that there is a lot of is 'shops' and they're all pretty cheap, so JB's very happy. I've done a lot in the Oakley shop round the corner, and JB's covered about all the other ones.

That's pretty much everything for now. We're meeting up with one of our Stray buddies, then leave to go back to LA on Tuesday.... then it's off to New York! Brilliant.

Crazy Vegas

It's true to say Las Vegas is totally crackers! We are staying in Egypt well the Luxor, with it's enormous Sphinx and light beam leading us back home after a night of giant margaritas and getting very lost in one of the many giant hotels.

From Las Vegas

We have seen piano duelling in New York, New York, Lions in MGM Grand, ate Krispey Kreme doughnuts in Excaliber, ate steak mignon in Paris, drank magaritas in Venice, watched the fountain display at the Bellagio, overlooked the Strip from the Stratosphere tower and have just about walked our little socks off!

From Las Vegas

Managed to double our money in the casino but then loose it again, but then $10 is not bad going compared to some of the stories we've heard happens out here.

From Las Vegas

San Diego is our destination tomorrow for a few days catching up with a friend who will be our personal tour guide (we hope) and then it's off to New York for our last week before we finally head home! Getting very Christmassy now I love it.

From Las Vegas

Viva Las Vegas

We're now in Vegas, staying at the Luxor (there's a Hooters hotel down the road but I didn't know about it, praps next time). First impressions of Vegas are that its a strange silly place. Will do another update soon with more interesting stuff in it and photos, but for now I only have two things to report.

1. Matty Taylor's Goal on Saturday was brilliant. Check it out here. Nav used to do that to me in Pro-Evo all the time and there's not a lot your goaly can do about it, even in real life it turns out.
2. I've finally finished doing the Ian Rush Milk Advert, which was filmed using a real scouser back at our last night in Sydney, while we were both very drunk. It's quality, and it's here...

I didn’t know that, I would’ve said “San Fran"

We made it out of Fiji, OK, thanks for the concern everyone. For those that don't know, Fiji has been taken over by the military, which should mean lots of tanks and helicopters zooming around the place, but we didn't see any. In fact, no difference at all. As you can see from this picture below taken by one of our crack photographers, the Fijians are adjusting to the changes in small steps.

From Fiji

We are in San Francisco. Thursday DID finally end, and with a 19hr time difference from Fiji we're having a bit of trouble coping, so we're tired a lot and Jodie is sleeping a lot, apart from when she's meant to be sleeping, then she's awake.

From San Francisco

We've done all the main stuff.... Visited Fishermans Wharf, went to Alcatraz and seen the Golden Gate Bridge, but mainly and more importantly we've done a lot of wandering about and thank the Gods, we've got our laundry done! So far we can confirm that everything is a lot bigger out here. Food, big. Cars, big. Sea Lions, yes, big. I guess, I mean we don't see many other sea lions to be honest. Check out the Hummer below though. Not entirely easy-to-park.

From San Francisco

We fly out tomorrow set for Vegas, which again is all very exciting. Lots of photo's have been uploaded, so you can see what we looked like in Fiji and San Francisco (much the same as everywhere else, but with different backdrops, and probably a bit more tired than usual).

This last photo is important for some of the people who know us, because if you look carefully in the background, there is a Jonathan looky-likey! How spooky! Can you see him!? Seriously. I saw you Jon, we know you're out here...

From San Francisco

Groundhog Day

Back on the road again after a nice 2 week break in Fiji, things have all got so complicated, its very confusing. We've just flown over the International Dateline. This means that today is going to be very long indeed. We got up this morning (thursday), had a bit of lunch, got on the boat at 2.30pm to go to the airport for a bit of a mooch around, before getting on the plane for around 11pm.

However, we land in Los Angeles at 1.30pm. Thursday! Which is before we left the island to go to the airport!? Time travel messes with you mind, and is best avoided.

Anyway - we're not hanging around in LA, we're going straight to San Francisco and by the time we get there it's only going to be about 4pm Thursday. What a spookily long day (just found out flight to SF is delayed too dammit).

Fiji was interesting. We spent the first week at Beachcomber Island. "Are you sure?" said the nice lady at the desk when we booked it. "Of course, looks nice in this leaflet" we said and went ahead. Arriving there we checked in and were shown to our dorm bunks, in a dorm that sleeps over 100. Which would have been OK normally, but the other guests seemed to consist of at least 98 young randy yanks/aussies who were all intent on explaining their life stories to each other loudly throughout the night in the hope of a leg over.

After 5 nights at Beachcomber, yes 5, count them, we headed to another island, 'Manta Ray Island', which had been recommended to us by the Stray gang. And it was great. This time we had a Jungle Bure, which was right on the beach, so we could listen to the waves at night, and right away from any other civilisation on the island - not that there was much. We even had our own 'toilet', which was a composting one, which I don't think I'll go into too much detail but put it this way, it doesn't flush.

Days there were pretty uneventful.... get up, lie on beach, eat, lie on beach, eat, sleep. Although snorkelling was excellent with a reef right in the bay, and we went on a couple of dives which were fantastic. From a spider-fearing point of view, things were not so good. On the first afternoon, I spotted 2 quite big jumping spiders on the window sill which didn't help my afternoon kip. Then one night we headed up to eat, and as we walked up we both noticed an enormous Huntsman spider running along the wall next to us, about 1 meter away, which was enough to make me freeze in my tracks and make a weird noise. Definitely not good with spiders, me. Luckily Jodie was around to help me walk past it.

On the 2nd to last day we were just sitting down to eat when we noticed that the person sitting next to us was Tom from the Stray Bus, excellent! Gave us a chance to catch up on stuff and was good to see the fella.

So as I said, we're going to be in San Francisco for the next few days. Right now I think we're going to go to sleep, and hopefully when we wake up it won't be Thursday 7th December anymore!