Despite fears about our safety in Antigua, the first three nights we spent passed without incident. We had a moment of panic after the plane touched down when our hand luggage was missing but it turned up on a random seat about 5 rows in front of us. We’d organised a private car to take us from the airport in crime ridden Guatemala City to the tourist mecca of Antigua. Here we found narrow, cobbled streets with scattered ruins and churches every few blocks. The city lies 1.5km above sea level and is surrounded by volcanoes and green hills. Our hostel turned out to be dark and damp with too few toilets and our barred window looked out into the corridor. It did have a rooftop bar overlooking the city and free wi-fi which went some ... read more

By the time we touched down in Vancouver we’d managed to convince Emilie to change her flight thus spending 3 days in Vancouver with us. Checked into the YHA Central on Granville Street right in the heart of the city and soon discovered the many Irish bars around. These came in handy for the Rugby World Cup matches and also for eating cheaply. It didn’t take us long to take off on foot and discover Canada Place (the waterfront structure), Gastown and Chinatown. A homeless man offered his assistance to help us find our restaurant (Wild Rice, modern Chinese and very good) but sent us in the exact opposite direction. We’d already given him a dollar before we’d realised, such mugs! Our first impressions of Vancouver are that we really like it but there are far ... read more

Getting from Singapore to our hotel in Manila turned out to be more interesting than we’d envisaged. First off, a basic error with the terminal (reading the arrival terminal rather than the departure one) resulted in a dash across the building to the sky train, then a shuttle bus to the budget terminal. Luckily, we’d left enough time. We had sandwiches at O’Brien’s Cafe which also offered such mystery Irish items as Aran Island Sauce, Dublin Cheesecake and Irish Recipe Muffins. On our flight with Cebu Pacific we had the pleasure of playing Seat Bingo because ‘Happy passengers make for a happy flight’ (according to Enervon Multivitamins). The air hostesses stood at the front, one with 2 bags of tiles (one for the row number & one for seat letter) and the other had the task ... read more

Wellington was literally a wash out for us. It lashed the whole time we were there, which was less than 24 hours. We did manage to squeeze in the Te Papa museum which was fantastic and definitely deserved more than the hour and a half we gave it. It has many interactive exhibits including a simulated earthquake in a small house, a colossal squid and video of its capture and plenty on the indigenous Maori population and migration of the Pacific Islanders. But the road called and so we hit it early in the afternoon so we could reach Napier by night, and we succeeded. It was a mission though in poor driving conditions. Napier is known for its Art Deco buildings which came about during the rebuild necessary after the 1931 earthquake which levelled most ... read more

Our next stop was Queenstown, New Zealand. As part of the Rugby World Cup build up, Air New Zealand has a very funny safety video featuring the host team, the All Blacks, and ending with a granny streaking down the aisle. We’ve never seen so many people watching a safety video before and everybody was laughing along. It was only 3 hours across from Oz and the last 40 minutes or so we were treated to spectacular views over the Fiordlands and coming into Queenstown. The airport is surrounding by snow capped peaks, simply stunning. We were lucky to have a clear sky on our approach as it would have been a shame to have missed the amazing views. Our hire car shop was located off site so we were collected in the courtesy van by ... read more