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An Isle of Wight couple is home safe after getting the last flight home from New York ahead of Hurricane Sandy.
Roma and Donald Cade had enjoyed a six-day stay in New York, before expecting to experience their first ever cruise down aboard the Carnival Miracle as far as Grand Turk Island, stopping at ports on the way.
However, the eight-day cruise was cut short after their first port of call, when those aboard the Virgin-organised cruise were told they would be heading straight back to New York, taking a route that kept the ship at least 400 miles away from the effects of the hurricane.
Roma told IW Radio: "It was very rough, very rough indeed, and we had five days at sea like that. It was quite an experience. We had seven-foot swells and I don't travel very well."
After returning to the city, Roma and her husband managed to get the last flight out of JFK Airport on Monday morning.
She continued: "The streets were empty, you've never seen anything like it. Having spent a few nights in New York to begin with, it was absolutely teaming with taxis all night long. When we actually left the city, there was nothing on the street at all. Most things were actually closed down, they'd closed all the Metro, all the buses, all the bridges and we had access through one tunnel to the airport."
"We were the only ones in the airport, very eerie it was. We were the only plane on the runway, when you looked out the windows there was nothing. And, of course, JFK is a very funny airport - there's water on both sides of you - so it's very frightening because you could see how rough it was and obviously when it did come in later on that day it did actually hit there so there was quite a lot of flooding," Roma added.
And Roma said it was an experience she never wants to relive: "I was very frighted, I've had a cold and the pain in my ears to take off was awful because there was turbulance taking off. But once we were out of there, there were no problems. I really don't want to do that again and the fear of the cruise was one thing, but the fear once we got back into New York was something else again, I'm so glad to be home, so glad."
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