Back home...

Touch down. Journey over. Sixteen hours of flying and we're very tired, very dirty but home. Both our families welcome us at the airport.

Six months and ten countries later our adventure is complete and for the first time we are somewhere familiar. We know how it all works, how to get around, we speak the language without the need for a phrasebook, we find our way back into London without needing a map. It's great to be back, but hey.. what a great world.

Los Angeles, USA

Again, we were only two days here. LA contrasts sharply with everywhere else we've been. The people are enormous; it really is staggering. The modes of transport are all similarly huge - guess they have to be. Maybe that helps explain why Americans so rarely travel abroad - they simply would not fit.

Public transport is virtually non-existent in LA, the car rules the day, so for one of the two days we hired our own. We made it out to Venice beach, Bel Air, Beverly Hills then along Sunset boulevard to Hollywood. We spent a good hour driving around trying very hard to get a good picture of the famous huge white letters - it's much harder than you would imagine, there are very few places in Hollywood where you can see the sign at all!

The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a disappointment. The street itself is just a bunch of fairly scruffy tourist shops. Even Venice beach wasn't particularly impressive; it's an ok-ish strip of sand featuring a small number of beautiful people skating the boardwalk, a small number of bodybuilders lifting weights and a huge number of overweight Americans stuffing themselves with beef burgers. Nice.

On our second day we made a visit to the Universal studios. Built around the working studios this is a combination of amusements, virtual reality rides and restaurants. Everything has that disney quality to it and appropriately sparkly music is piped in throughout the park to give the impression that you're part of a cinematic experience. The Terminator 3D experience is fantastic!

In the evening we dine at a traditional restaurant, the American steak-house. Never before has a plate of food felt threatening. On seeing some food mountains heading to nearby tables we dare not order a starter, so the waitress brings us some bread, only this isn't your small bread roll, it's half a loaf! The food was great, but we only ate two meals a day for the duration of our stay in LA.