Holiday in America

What a holiday! Absolutely fantastic.

Chris and I haven't been abroad since before Grace was born - 19 years ago. We chose this holiday as a special treat as part of our Silver Wedding celebrations.

21 years ago, Chris and I did a tour of USA and Canada, similar to this one, but with more time in Canada.

This time round the itinerary was 2 nights in New York, 2 nights in Niagara Falls, 1 night in Philadelphia, 2 nights in Washington and then back to New York for another 2 nights.

We certainly timed the holiday well - we were in Niagara for Canada Day (1st July) and in Philadelphia for 4th July, there were firework displays most nights of the holiday.

New York was wonderful. 21 years ago I had had mixed feelings about the city, but this time round I fell in love with the place. It felt so friendly.

Obviously we did all the usual tourist things.

We were surprised to find that a number of Antony Gormley's statues had been taken from our beach at home and were now, for a limited time, adorning the streets and skyscrapers around Madison square park.

We loved this street sign on 5th Avenue!

Niagara Falls was awesome. Plenty of firework displays in the evening.

The Maid of the Mist was far wetter than I remembered. This was the highlight of the trip for Grace and Eve.

Being in Philadelphia for the fourth of July celebrations was unbelievable. What an atmosphere! We have nothing like this in the UK. We sat and listened to the performers and speakers on the stage, them we waved our flags at the parade.

Miss America sang the national anthem.

In Washington the temperature was up to 100 degrees. Too hot to walk around the monuments and war memorials but we had a great afternoon visiting the Smithsonian museums. Eve and I went to the American Indian Museum whilst Chris and Grace went to Air and Space and then one of the art galleries.

This next one reminds us of Abbey Road!!

It would have been wonderful to have stayed longer in Washington and have had more time to visit more of the museums.

Going back to our hotel in New York was like returning home. We had a day wandering around Central Park and our last morning was spent up the Empire State building.

At the top of the Empire State building we found ourselves for a time in low cloud - quite refreshing after all the heat of the previous days. We were very impressed with this pigeon, which had made the long flight to the top of the Empire State building.

Our last few hours were spent in Madison Square park - our favourite place to relax.

An exhausting trip but so memorable. Everything went smoothly thanks to our tour director Beth and driver Henry.

A great way to celebrate our Silver Wedding.

I hope you liked the photos - just a few of the hundreds we took!!