Recently in Sightseeing Category

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.

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.

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...

"After saying our goodbye's to Scarlett, Sarah and I headed on our way to San Luis Obispo. This is about a 3 hour drive from Hollywood and is part way between Hollywood and San Francisco. The drive also takes you on the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the main reasons Sarah and I wanted to hire a car for this leg of the trip. There are some stunning viewing points.

We arrived in Hollywood after a 10 hour drive from the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, we couldn't afford the Beverly Wiltshire, so we had to settle for our first hostel in a few weeks! It was a big shock to the system after those nice hotels in the OC and Vegas! Luckily, Sarah and I were just in a shared room for one night, then we moved to a 3 bed private room the next morning as Scarlett was joining us.

I cannot believe I am writing this with only two months left of my travels... The past six months have just been a whirlwind!

We arrived at LAX airport in Los Angeles after a 12 hour flight from New Zealand. Again, some child was screaming and keeping me awake all night so I was pretty shattered by the time we landed.

After a 40 minute flight we arrived in Vegas to possibly one of the coolest airports on the planet. The first thing staring us in the face when we stepped off the plane was a mini casino, and then we had to get a subway to where we picked up our luggage!

After a fabulous, fun-packed week in Vegas we picked up a hire car and headed to the Grand Canyon.

Our original idea before we came away travelling was to hire a convertible for this little leg of the trip, but when it came down to it, we couldn't afford it. Instead we settled for a Ford Escape, which was really nice and spacious - lots of room for our huge suitcases so we were happy.

May 11th-May 13th: Franz Josef

We all woke up with sore heads after the Pu Party, and we had to be on the bus by 9am to get to our next destination, Franz Josef.

Luckily, we didn't stop off at too many places on the way, although we did visit this awful deer farm where we had to watch a video that basically glorified killing animals.

It was quite disturbing and I hated every second of being in there. God only knows why Morrie thought it'd be a good idea to take us there!

From there we headed to Franz Josef where we stopped for two nights. I had booked to go horse riding in the afternoon, hoping it would somehow clear my hangover!

It turned out to be really good fun, and the scenery was incredible. Sarah doesn't really like horses so I went with a couple of guys from the Kiwi bus, Charlie and Rob.

I did a lot of horse riding when I was younger but I hadn't done it in years so I was hoping it would come back to me like driving a car..... luckily it did!

We were up early the next morning as we were doing a full day hike on the Franz Josef Glacier.

Once we had all got kitted up in all our thermals we headed for the Glacier. Me and Sarah opted the second fastest group, and had a guide called Alex.

It was an eight hour hike, and although parts of it were hard work we all had so much fun. The view was incredible.

The higher we got the more blue the ice became, because of the lack of oxygen. Our guides had been up on the Glacier earlier in the morning finding caves for us to go through and digging new ones.

It was so much fun. Some of the crevices we went through were not much wider than I am, they were so narrow!

If there is one thing I would recommend when visiting New Zealand it would definitely be visiting Franz Josef, and doing the glacier walk.

The town itself is tiny but it is absolutely stunning. I think it is something you have to see to really appreciate it.

Our next stop after Franz Josef was Wanaka, and it was a really long journey. We did stop off at some stunning lakes though so that broke the day up a little bit.

Our first stop of the day was Lake Matheson. Sarah and I had both seen some really amazing pictures of this lake so we were looking forward to seeing it for ourselves. We weren't disappointed. It is absolutely amazing.

I'm not sure how well my pictures do it justice, but these are some of the better ones I took......

We then went to a waterfall which showed an illusion if you stared at it for 60 seconds. After a few tries I finally got it. The waterfall looked like it was shooting back up. It was pretty cool and so funny watching all 50 of with our eyes glued to the waterfall!

We then stopped at Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea which are the 3rd and 4th biggest lakes in the South Island of New Zealand, which were again, absolutely beautiful...