Oh no! Can you believe a week has past us by in NY already? We’ve had the most spectacular week and are so sad to be leaving Gerrod and Kristy and NY.

For those of you coming to visit Team Thomas later this year I reckon you’re going to have the most fabulous time. Gerrod and Kristy have got it all figured out, you feel at home straight away and they have all directions and sites lined up for you.

You can’t beat having these two as best friends. Their generous hospitality has made our week in NY absolutely magical. Thanks guys.

Yep that’s right … leaving NY means our holidays are over. We’re officially going to be unemployed, homeless and enjoying every mad moment of our adventure in the UK starting from tomorrow. We can’t wait.

It may be a few days before we post an update but hopefully we’ll be online a whole lot more now that we have a notebook.

Poor Gerry has shown impeccable timing and fallen ill just in time for his days off. With Kristy charged with providing the vitamins and chicken soup, Ben and I headed off south to catch the Statue of Liberty Ferry, which also stops at Ellis Island, New York’s main immigration station for the first half of last century. It turns out hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people had the same idea. The queue stretched for hundreds of metres so we decided we weren’t that committed to catching the ferry.

Instead, we headed north to explore more of Central Park, including Trump’s Wollman Rink as featured in The Apprentice. We then wandered down 5th Avenue to check out all of the ultra-classy designer stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany and Co, Prada and Gucci.

The highlight for us was the giant toystore FAO Schwarz. They have every type of toy imaginable – and plenty of things we just couldn’t have imagined! There’s nothing a kid (big or small) could want that this store can’t provide, and with amazing variety, luxury and personalising. You can even adopt your own life-like baby. I could’t resist picking one up. A bit too life-like me thinks!

We woke this morning and rushed to have breakfast at a local diner with Gerrod before he started work this morning. It wasn’t until it was past blazingly obvious that Gerrod informed us that he had arranged to take today and tomorrow off. The K-girl and G-man had managed to trick us good. Those bastards …

After finding this out we felt a little bit bad about our plans for the day as they weren’t too exciting. Gerrod seemed content to just hang though so that was cool. We headed down to Soho where I purchased my new notebook and then after that we had lunch at Taco Bell before heading down to Times Square.

Times Square is the neon sign section of NY, you know that place you see in all the movies. It’s by far the busiest part of NY city and especially so today as it was St Patrick’s Day.

NY is big on St Patricks Day. The parade today just kept on going and going with Irish marching bands and the line up outside Irish pubs was unbelievable.

Apart from being St Patricks Day it’s also my little sister’s birthday today. She turns 20. Happy Birthday Hayley.

Yesterday Michelle, Kristy and myself headed downtown to the lower east side of NY. Our first stop was Pier 17 where we got a nose full of fresh fish and a wonderful view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Afterwards we headed up to Chinatown and Little Italy.

The lower east side is pretty but it was Soho (south of Houston St) that grabbed my attention. Full of nifty clothes, coffee and technology stores. Michelle and Kristy were super keen on the clothes stores but Ben headed straight for the Apple computer store.