Wednesday March 8, 2017 Getting up to go and see the sun rise, is quite a sacrifice, but, as it turned out was really worthwhile, and this taking into consideation that we did not get a full sunrise. Clouds covered a real complete sunrise, so what we saw was the reflection of the sun on the clouds with sparce rays really shining through. Gives a real nice effect nevertheless and lights up the Kata Tjuta (KT) rock formation in a continuous different colour. The KT formation is one of the two major attractions here. Whereas Uluru is a monolithic (one rock), KT is a series of rocks. Where from a distance it looks like a single stone formation, coming up close you see that it is consists of many stones and sand glued together under enormous ... read more

Monday March 6, 2017 A different but beautiful day. After a couple of dreary days, today turned out to be a blockbuster day. Beautiful wheathe with lots of activity. It started this morning with a walking excursion to the most original part of town called "the rocks". This was the first place where prisoners settled in 1788. A place that has been preserved in its original setting not due to government intervention, but a a result of actions of the local people and workers unions to maintain the place as a historic site. Very well done! Lots of explanations and stories on how Sydney, and by the same token all but one of the other major cities inAustralia were founded Difficult to understand that most of the Australian initial inhabitants, apart from the aborigines, were convicts. ... read more

Saturday March 4 2017 Our first full day in Sydney. Let me give it to you as it is: jetlag is a bitch. We were awake around 3.00 AM, but fortunately we were able to drift off a bit, but around 7.00 AM, that was it. Great breakfast here at the hotel. After breakfast we spent some time in the business lounge where we met a friendly Australian couple that gave us some tips on things to do, amongst them, go and see the Mardi Gras Gay Parade. A major happening here. As it turns out Sydney, after San Francisco has the largest gay community of any city in the world. As you would find for these type of parades, people in favor others against. A major political figure of a Christian Democrat party here is ... read more

Wednesday March 1, 2017 As I said yesterday "wine related it will be". I had never imagined how much wine it would be. Not that we drank a lot, but being in Napa Valley, everything seems to gear around wine. Wineries and wine tasting opportunities all over the place. Really impressive!! It had one major drawback nevertheless, finding a good cup of coffee is difficult. The only wine tasting we participated in was in a real medieval castle "castello di amaroso" in the town of Calistoga. Very interesting and very well done. It was built by the owners of The Castello winery in 1993, using raw materials brought from Europe. The rest of the day we toured around and finally ended up n Sonoma, apparently the hart of the Napa Valley. In line what we did ... read more

October 19, 2016 Auckland is an interesting city. Depending who you talk to, it has about 1,5 million inhabitants, which is about a third of the whole population. Kind of amazing. I don't know any other country with similar characteristics. The economy of the country is concentrated around agriculture (dairy, fruits, fish and lately, wine). Today we dedicated our day to wine, not just drinking, but visiting 2 wineries. Wine in New Zealand is principally (over 80%) white wine, chardonnay and souvignon blanc. Wineries are still small and production is still limited, which turns New Zealand wine in realitively expensive. In restaurants you can buy local wine or imported and invariably, local wines are more expensive than the imported ones. Quality of the wine is good, although the wines from one of the wineries we visited ... read more