We decided to take an open top bus tour to see all the hotspots, but it was all in Spanish! Still no wiser with the Cuban culture (Craig claims he knew most of it… aye that’ll be right!).

We then decided to take things into our own hands and headed to the Revolution museum. As the title suggests, it was all dedicated to the Cuban revolution AND it was in English… winning! We learned a lot about the Cuban revolution, the embargo placed on Cuba by the US and saw many unique historical things. We even saw the stretcher used to take Che Guevara’s corpse from La Higuera to Valle Grande! A very worthwhile visit.

Any guessses for night time? More cocktails, pizza and boozy mojito sunset walks. Cuba is a beautiful country… especially at night.

We were staying in the heart of Old Havana with a Cuban family being our hosts, who also invited us to have breakfast with them. The food was great, although we were politely trying to shove down guava (traditional Cuban fruit) without trying to gag – can’t say we would recommend it!

Cuba has restrictions on their WiFi and we had to queue for almost 3 hours just to get some WiFi cards and see what exploring we could do. With a wasted day of queuing, we decided to just walk around and soak in the culture ourselves.

We tried some traditional Cuban dessert after dinner, sweet fruits with cheese sprinkled on top, again, it was ok but not something we would get on a regular basis.

More sunshine… or so we thought. We arrived into Old Havana initially to torrential rain and thunderstorms. Once that died down and the sun made an appearance we went for a wander. We decided, nothing else for it, but happy hour. Happy Hour seemed to be everywhere in Old Havana, so straight to the cocktails. The best cocktails we’ve ever had (probably because they were the strongest). We didn’t see much of the first day, the sun was strong and so were the cocktails. After a few too many, we called it a night.

For our last day in New York, we hired bicycles and cycled around Manhattan, as well as over to Brooklyn across the bridge and back. This was by far our best day. We had the freedom to visit lots of places without the need for public transport, although Katie did get scared cycling in rush hour traffic on 5th Avenue! It was touch and go for a few occasions though, the New Yorkers don’t mess about with their driving and there were a lot of horns being used. It was great fun though. We then cycled around Central Park after, although it took us longer than we thought because of the size of it!

With a full day of cycling (around 20 miles), we were pretty knackered and struggling to sit down with a couple sore arses, so we got a quick bite to eat, had a couple of drinks and grabbed an early night for an early flight to Havana in the morning.

On our third day in New York, we visited the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. It was a very moving experience. We learned more about what actually happened that day as we were both very young when it happened.

Later that night we went to the Top of the Rock to get a view of the NYC skyline at sunset. It was busy, but we managed to get some decent photos. As we were in that area of the city, we visited Times Square again to get some photos. Unfortunately, it began to rain so we had to take cover in Mcyd’s. Craig was too ‘manly’ to wear a poncho so he ended up soaked instead… fanny!

We booked tickets on an open top bus tour and went around the main tourist hot spots. This also included an hours ferry tour over to see the Statue of Liberty and then down the Hudson River. It was very warm so we picked up a few pink faces along the way!

After the bus tour we went up to the observation deck of the One World Trade Centre, which is the tallest building in Manhattan, to get a view of the NYC skyline.

Later that night we caught up with our friends, Ross and Brittany, for food and drinks. They took us around the best bars in Manhattan, including a rooftop bar terrace. Unfortunately, we had to endure Ross’ terrible chat for the night, but the views were incredible which made up for it. Ha, of course we’re just joking about Ross and it was a great night with friends and a few sore heads the next day!

And we’re off! We started our travels from Belfast so we could spend some time with Katie’s family beforehand and then flew into New York around 9pm local time.

The airport bus dropped us off at Times Square, so we quickly had a look around. It was very busy!

With a long day of travelling, we didn’t sightsee too much and decided it would be best to get up early and make the most of tomorrow.