Recently by Gemma Castle

225 days, 9 countries, and 65 cities, towns, villages and islands later, we are now reaching the end of our eight month tour of the world.

With only two weeks left, our final stop was New York City. What a perfect way to our trip of a lifetime!

We caught a train from Toronto to Montreal as it was only four-and-a-half hours away.

Montreal was one of the cities I was most looking forward to in Canada. I had heard such great things about it, and as many of you know, my Mum competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, and I couldn't wait to see the stadium.

August 15th:

It was another hot day so we headed back to Central Park for the day. It was stiflingly hot with no breeze, and with no pool to jump into, even I was struggling with the heat a little bit. Nevertheless, I got through it, and we had another good few hours in the sun.

"After a short train journey from Washington DC, we arrived in city number 3 of the east coast in North America, Philadelphia. As it proved pretty difficult to find a decent hostel in Philadelphia, we treated ourselves to a few nights in the Travellodge! Again, it was a luxury we had been missing!

I had a really great time in Chicago and I can't say I was particularly ready to leave. I could've easily stayed longer had we had the time, but that isn't to say I felt like spending over 12 hours at Chicago O'Hare airport, which in turn, has become by far the dullest day of our trip.

"My cousin Kate, her husband Paul, and their 2 children Keira and Nia, were there to greet us at the airport when we arrived in Charlottetown. At this point, Nia was only 11 days old and so tiny! We went straight to the Farmers Market for breakfast, and then headed back to their house where we sat out on the deck for a few hours catching up. Later that afternoon, the rest of the family came round and we had a BBQ. It was so nice to see everybody again and meet the two new additions to the family, Nia and Simon, who were born just three days apart from one another.

After a seven hour journey from Prince Edward Island, we arrived in Chicago at around midday, only to be told at our hostel we couldn't check in until 3pm.
We quickly changed into something cooler before heading out for a wander around the city. I instantly fell in love with Chicago, and it is definitely my favourite city in America so far...

"It was a four and a half hour flight from Vancouver to Toronto. Pretty long to say we were travelling within the same country! Sarah's Auntie Valerie  was there to meet us at the airport. Sarah's family are big wine drinkers (not that i'm complaining!) so that evening consisted of drinking lots of white wine, while Sarah and I told her Auntie and Uncle all about our travels. As much as we love travelling, every new person we meet asks us where we have been so we find ourselves repeating ourselves on a daily basis!

"Our friend Lindsay was there to greet is when we landed at Vancouver airport. We met Lindsay in Byron Bay in Australia, and she had invited us to stay with her mum, brother and her when we visited Vancouver...... So there we were.

"Once we had checked into our room we couldn't wait to get out, so we went across the road to a bar called The Barn Owl, and had a couple of drinks with free cheese and biscuits.
It is quite difficult getting used to hostels again. There were 6 of us on our room, Sarah and I, and then 4 french people I think. Luckily, the two beds Sarah and I had were in a seperate section to the other beds, so we had a bit more space each than we would normally have in a hostel.