Doug Mary

We realize that it has been quite a while since our last entry, but we were enjoying ourselves too much to make any new entries. You might think that 3 weeks is a lot of time to spend in such a relatively small area, but we ran out of time and could have stayed longer because this was our favorite place of the whole trip. We are lumping all of NZ into one blog entry, but there is a definite difference between the north and south islands. Fortunately, we flew into Christchurch in the south island to start our New Zealand adventures and spent the bulk of our time on that island. There really is no comparison between the north and south. The south is a place of amazing natural beauty and beckons you to be ... read more

For this entry, we are going to keep the text short and provide you with a lot of photos. This is mainly because we don't have tons to say about Melbourne and I'm not really in the mood right now to write a novel. So with that said..... We thought Melbourne was an average big city that you can find in a lot of countries. It did have an international flair from the people to the food. We included a few photos of the different food cuisines that we had to give you an idea of what can be found there. We stayed at a hotel near Chinatown, so we got to walk past those restaurants most every day, but we don't have any photos from there. I think that's because we are usually so anxious ... read more

Hello from down under! We are having a great time. The weather has been very nice - very warm but with a breeze. It is, however, the fly season. Those pesky little buggers fly around you and follow you as you are walking. You can slap at them all you want (which is what is affectionately known as the "Aussie wave"), but they know what they are doing as they are professionals. Perhaps I could teach them a little something about beer. We purchased a three day pass that allowed us to board the Sydney Explorer and Bondi Beach Explorer busses. The pass also granted us access to all bus, train, tram, and ferry systems in the city. It was a great deal. The Explorer busses took a little over two hours from the first to ... read more

While we were in Athens, we went to a tourist agent for tickets to a Greek island and walked out with a full-blown booking to Egypt! We arrived at the Cairo airport very early on Thursday morning and had a short layover before we caught a flight to Sharm El Sheikh, a city on the Red Sea. We caught a beautiful sunrise at the airport there before we went to the resort. We stayed at an "all-inclusive" (more on that later) resort for a few days of diving, snorkeling and R&R. We were on a boat full of Russians and one German guy who looked a lot like Jacques Cousteau; he had the hat and everything. Doug signed up for 2 dives and I had 2 snorkels; unfortunately, Doug only went on the first dive. Due ... read more

Doug and I met up in Vienna and caught a flight to Athens. We were grateful for the warm, sunny weather, which made it more enjoyable to be out and about. We got up early the first day and were at it by 8:00 am. We went to the Acropolis first, where you can see the pictures of the Parthenon, Athena Nike Temple and the two theatres. There is massive restoration taking place there now, so we only took side-view shots of the Parthenon and couldn't get a good shot of any structure there. It was probably due to this construction going on, but our impression of the Acropolis as a whole is that it didn't meet our expectations. Based on photos in magazines and also the Olympic coverage with the aerial shots, that wasn't what ... read more