Our last few days in NYC were spent getting around to some more of the common tourist haunts. We don't want to bore you with the definitive list but it includes the usual suspects such as the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station (best known for the final scene of Carlito's Way), Wall St., Central Park, World Trade Centre and walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Towards the end of our week, we felt confident using the public transport system (sometimes we even got to felt like pros when some lost soul approched us looking to get from A to B). We were totally at home, cruising from East Village up to the Bronx and then downtown again and so on. Having said that however, it didn't take too much to throw a spanner in the works. On one occasion for example we had a whole route planned to get ourselves crosstown in the morning, but this got pearshaped very quickly when the bus we were on reached a sequence of blocks full of roadworks and couldn't make the usual stops. Our planned connection to the next bus was somewhere in the middle of all this chaos so understandably we ended up a fair few blocks out this time. Due to this blow to our confidence, there was a knock on effect which caused us to make a few panicy early exits from the subway when we thought we'd missed our intended stops.

If we had to pick a favorite area of this city, I think it would have to be Greenwich Village. This traditionally bohemian centre of New York still has a similar feel and vibe to what Jimi Hendrix and the like would have experienced back in the Sixties. We both really loved it and it was exactly what we were looking for at the time. Because NYU is set in this area it kind of makes it feel like one big campus and we whiled away a good stretch of time chilling out in the cafes and watching the world go by. Washington Square Park (West 4th St.) was a great spot to sit on a bench and listen to a busker banging out a few tunes and watch the crazies wandering about. Just a stones throw from this, we came across the quintessential street-style basketball game. The public courts were attracting a lot of attention as things got underway and the hustling and chit chat being thown around during the game (which looked like it was being taken all too seriously) was great entertainment. <90210 star>

The fact that our favorite places were those that we could chill out in, was probably a good reflection on what we were looking to do next. We had been going non-stop at a fairly hectic pace for such a long stretch (to get ourselves on the road) that it started to feel like a good time to try and wind things down. Six days is not nearly enough time to see all of this huge multi-sided city, but it was enough to whet our appetite at least. This is definately a city that we want to see more of at a future point.

On Wednesday we grabbed a flight to the next leg of our trip; taking us south, to the Caribbean. The sole aim in mind being to reach the beaches...