Concrete Jungle

Our final day with the car started as many of our days had, in a Walmart car park. We were clearing out all the rubbish and packing all our things into manageable bags. This took a little while but we eventually dumped all the stuff in a nearby trash can and set off on our way to the car hire centre. We’d taken the car to be cleaned and vacuumed the previous day so we were hopefully going to turn up, hand over the keys and get a lift to our motel for the night.

It essentially worked that way, and after a bit of waiting around we said our goodbye to our faithful Sian Lloyd and were once again on our way. We’d driven 14852 miles in the van and spent 283 hours doing so. That brakes down as Andrew doing 5187 miles in 86 hours and me doing 9665 miles in 198 hours. That makes it look like I drive a lot slower but I think I just hit more traffic.



Once we were checked in at the motel we had a couple of much needed showers and walked a couple of blocks to ‘Terminal One Sports Bar’ to watch the England – USA game. We arrived a couple of minutes before kick-off and the atmosphere was high. There was one guy sitting at the bar for the duration of the match giving his opinion loudly just as you find in English bars. When somebody was called up for being offside he said “I guess they can’t go in that box when the ref’s not there”. I don’t think he really understood soccer too well.

Four minutes in saw the England goal and we realised that there was a decent amount of fellow England supporters in the bar. I think it was just the case of everybody who wasn’t American was supporting England. When the USA goal came it was clear what country we were in as a huge cheer went up and the whole bar started chanting U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A. It was a disappointing game in all but good to watch in an American bar.

The next morning we lugged our bags to the train station and rode into New York for the last time. We turned up at the hostel for our final night sweaty and knackered. Once we were showered and had our bags in their final arrangement for the flight we set out to see the city for the last time.

We caught the subway to Time Square where there seemed to be more police officers stationed than the last time we visited for some reason. It was good to see the area at night all lit up although it was a bit dazzling. We also tried to book our seat on the flight whilst there on our phones but BA's site was in the wrong format to view so we headed back to the hostel to do it.

After a humid night's sleep we had some time to spend before the setting off to the flight so we went for breakfast at a diner around the corner. We then did a spot of caching in central park and went to the gift shop of the Natural History Museum.

We then donned our bags again and caught the subway to the airport. There weren't any delays to check in or at security so we spent the rest of the time hanging around. The flight was surprisingly pleasant. We were set to leave at 19.45 US time and arrive 7.40 UK time so I got to watch the sunset and the sunrise from my window seat. We somehow managed to dodge the volcano and crew strikes too. The meal was actually quite pleasant too. The plane touched down and ended our holiday with a slight bump.


J.