And the award goes to...

...and so, as all good things must come to an end, here I am back in sunny Blighty (no thanks to Virgin Atlantic, after an almighty delay and total chaos at JFK).

So, six weeks, about twenty-six different beds and over 26,000 miles...what's the conclusion?  Absolutely bloody amazing, in short.  Part of the reason for this trip was to see whether it was possible to enjoy whizzing round the world in such a short space of time (six weeks) and at an, ahem, slightly more advanced age than most who hit a similar trail.  The answer is YES to both questions, although tiredness was a factor at times.

Throughout this blog I've tried to avoid naming too many specific hotels and companies for fear of it looking like a PR-sponsored jamboree.  Its an accusation often levelled at travel writing, that we are just endlessly nice about people/companies who arrange the trips we go on.  The joy of this blog is that I don't owe anything to anyone - the travel features I'll be writing tick those boxes - so anything mentioned here is because I genuinely think its a great place.

So in that vein, I hereby announce the inaugural Fogg Blog Awards - a few suggestions, tips and recommendations for anyone lucky enough to do a similar trip - or just planning a holiday to one of the countries I visited.

First up...

The 'I Know This Country Like the Back of My Hand' Award for Best Tour Operator
This one has to go to New Zealand In Depth (www.newzealand-indepth.co.uk).  They put together a fantastic itinerary that showed me the best of the North Island, staying at a great mix of places, from lakeside cabins to swanky B&Bs.  Everywhere I went the property owners had met and knew the owner of the company, and had only good things to say,

The 'This Could Go on For the Rest of the Day' Award for Best Lunch
Sydney wins this one hands down with two fantastic restaurants; Coogee Pavilions (merivale.com.au) on Coogee Beach - a great sprawling brasserie of a place, great for families and long lunches of cold white wine and seafood platters.  And also the Grounds of Alex (thegroundsroasters.com),

tucked away in a residential area of the city, a huge warehouse and fairylit garden, serving up fabulously hearty food, home-made pastries and cakes and freshly-ground coffee.

The 'I Have Actually Found Heaven' Award for Best Beach
Forget Bondi or Santa Monica, beautiful, isolated, unspoilt Kuaotunu Beach

on New Zealand's breathtaking Coromandel Peninsula wins by a mile.  My 5pm swim on a sunny Sunday afternoon was one of the highlights of the trip.


The 'Lets Do Something a Bit Worthy This Afternoon' Award for Best Museum
Another joint award; Chicago's amazing Art Institute (artic.edu) has to be a winner, with a spectacular collection of art, including Impressionist galleries that rival anything the Met or the National can offer.  On a much smaller scale, the Burma-Thai Railway Museum in Thailand

was a fascinating, sobering, but gently-done exploration of the horrors of the 'Death Railway' in the Second World War.

The 'I'll Be In the Dining Car Waiting for Cary Grant' Award for Best Train Journey
Only one contender here, the E&O Express that glides between Thailand and Singapore;

all polished teak dining cars, white-gloved attendants and the fabulous jazz pianist in the bar.  Amtrak might compete on scenery but it doesn't quite match it for luxe-ness.

The 'I'll be Exercising Absolutely No Self-Control' award for Best Dinner
Two very different winners here; the lipsmacking (and mouth-burning) supper we ate on the Yarowat Road in Bangkok's Chinatown; fish steeped in chillis and garlic, crispy shrimp, oyster-sauce coated greens and egg fried rice, with cold Tiger Beers and the traffic rushing past.  And then Chicago's renowed Girl and the Goat (girlandthegoat.com); some of the most inventive (and tasty) food I've eaten in a while.

The 'Meeting People is What Its All About' for Best Character
One of the biggest joys of the trip was the amount of interesting, charming people I met.  Favourite of all was Mr Cliff, an ageing photographer who sold beautiful pictures on the square in Santa Fe; his grandfather's photographs touched up and reimagined with new digital technology.  'Ah spent a lotta time gettin' drunk in your pubs' he drawled at us, grinning.  We loved him.

Honourable mention should also go the truly lovely Maurice, a Maori grandfather who showed me his local marae and revealed a few rainforest secrets to me.

The 'I'm Changing the Locks and Never Leaving' Award for Best Hotel
Tricky this one, because there are so many to choose from.  Budget-wise, Citizen M New York (citizenm.com) takes a lot of beating (it even has a rooftop bar) but you have to not mind the pod-style rooms.  The King & Queen Suites in New Plymouth (kingandqueen.co.nz) was a great example of a new, fresh hotel with great values...but Crosby Street (firmdalehotels.com) still rocks it for me.

The 'I'm Really Quite Grateful' Award for Making it All Possible
An entirely gratuitous plug, admittedly, but this trip would never have happened without the wonderful STA Travel (statravel.co.uk) - who were keen to get the message across that whizzing around the world is not just for twentysomethings.  It's  a message I'll be making sure I get out there.

So that's it.  The washing is on, the suitcase stowed and it's time to close the blog.  It's been an awfully big adventure.  I hope you've enjoyed reading about it.

New York, New York

Somehow it's happened.  After just under six weeks and 21,000 miles, here I am in my final port of call; the gorgeous, glorious, hedonistic, hectic, unbelievably fabulous New York.

Not that getting here was easy.  After a six-hour delay at Chicago's Union Station (it actually made me feel a bit wistful for the trifling delays I normally suffer with Southern rail), the train chugged slowly through endlessly snowy landscapes, with great piles of the stuff piled up against houses and at the sides of roads.  By the time we finally pulled up at Penn Station it was 1.30am, rather than our supposed arrival time of 6.25pm.  Arriving at the hotel to discover they couldn't find our reservation was not what we wanted to hear.

But no-one can stay cross, or tired, in New York for long.  At first I wasn't going to write a blog post about New York, because it's all been said so many times before, but I think tips and recommendations are always helpful, so here's a few.

Pick your time when to go.  It may be perishing cold here right now, but in winter the ice rinks are open (the one below is at Rockefeller Plaza), all the tourist attractions are quieter and you're more likely to be able to get a table for dinner at the restaurant of your choosing.

Events like Restaurant Week (nycgo.com/restaurantweek) which happens in February, are a great way to save money while eating in some top restaurants.  Try to come in the week rather than at a weekend when, again, the main sights and shopping areas will be far less busy.

In terms of where to stay, New York can be wincingly expensive. Location makes a huge difference - if you're in Midtown, you're close to all the sights, but if you stay below 14th Street - in Soho, the East Village, or the Lower East Side, you'll experience a more authentic side of Manhattan.  At the budget end, there's nowhere to beat Citizen M in Midtown (citizenm.com), where rates start at around £120 a night - a bargain for NYC.

If budget isn't an issue, then Crosby Street Hotel in Soho is, for my money, one of the best hotels in the city.  Part of the British www.firmdale.com chain, it matches English style with NYC chutzpah.  But the prices will sting.

Eating out can be a full-time occupation in NYC, and the best way is to try and encompass everything from classic diners to ethnic coffee shops to Italian pasta like Mama used to make.  We've eaten eggs-over-medium with hash browns and endless coffee at the Evergreen Diner (www.evergreendinernyc.com) in Midtown, delicious tapas at Barca (www.barca-tapas.com) in Soho, slightly strange cookies and 50p tea and coffees in an unpronounceable Chinese coffee shop, deep in Chinatown and fabulous Greek meze at the Kellari Taverna (www.kellari.us) also in Midtown.

It's our very last day today, so we're just going to stroll - because that's the best way to see the city.  We'll head on up to the wonderful Flatiron Building

and then wander back down to Chinatown for a late lunch.  That's the plan, but when you wander in New York, you never know quite what you're going to find - yesterday we encountered a whole celebration in Chinatown, with dragons frisking about outside shops to ward off evil spirits for the coming year.

And then, after that, the airport will beckon.  But it's far, far too soon to be thinking about that...