Well I had huge hopes for this place, and I am thrilled to report it is certainly Fun to be a part of it! In homage to one of the best shows on earth this entry shall be dedicated as promised to the gods down at HBO. As we stepped off the plane, greeted by the first light of that particular New York day: I couldn't help but wonder..... "Will New York really be that great?" We received some excellent advice from our first Noo Yoiker accent. We didn't have a clue how to get to our digs, so approached a guy at the airport information station. Do not ask me why but I remember him, in my minds-eye, as being dressed in a broadway-fabulous outfit of bold stripes down to his waistcoat/vest, and I think ... read more
So after returning from Vegas to Pasadena the plan was that we'd spend a nice finale day with Steve and the family before getting back onto the road to head up the Pacific Coast - taste some wine in the Napa and then push on to Frisco. That nasty tennis bug we spoke of previously came back into our court, and Thom took his turn to be very much out of action for a couple of days. To finish this evil bug off once and for all we concluded that it be best for us to stay in one place till it had died, and then get back on the road. As this took a couple of days Napa was cut out of our schedule..... that's just the way things turn out unfortunately, but at least ... read more
So as you will probably have interpreted from the last entry, this one slots in the middle of it. A blog sandwich, if you will. So in our car we sped off in a slow upwards gradient all the way up to the Grand Canyon. The view on the way included lots of dessert like terrain, and then as we got higher the road ploughed through flintstones-like boulders and finally 'piney' forests filled with snow. Quite a variety of things to see in one road trip, I'm sure you'd agree. But I hope it helps to draw the picture of how huge everything is in America, it really does boggle the mind after a while. Yes, you have the obvious things that we have come to expect like - why have a normal sized beverage when ... read more
After landing safely in the US of A we spent ages sorting out our lush rental car - a brand new PT Chysler Cruiser! When we had finally gotten this done Laura tackled driving on the wrong side of the road, operating an automatic car and all of this combined with jet-lag. Well, an hour or so of crazy highway driving and following GPS (?!) and seeing the wonders of big city life, we arrived at my cousin Steve's house. The stunning house in Pasadena, was a very welcome sight. As was seeing the very hospitable Steve and his wonderful wife Liza. Soon after arrival we were tucking into a lovely dinner and beaut bottle of California Cabernet! It was cool to see their kids Taylor and Lexi. I hadn't seen Taylor since he was this ... read more
I'm going to keep this entry short and sweet for you all, as I am unable to put 2 weeks of smug grinning into words. This holiday was utterly amazing!!!!!! The resort was lovely - even though we had spiders (enjoy the pics) The beach came with it's own wonderous reef attached, which was home to rays, nemo's and even a huge Leopard shark which we would snorkel out to say good morning to every day. The massages were delightful The people we met were great The Food was incredible, and the cocktails were strong! All in all we made a little video for all of you out there to give you a couple of minutes of the treasure that is "Fiji Time". So if you have had a bad day before reading this, or simply ... read more
With a week to spare before our flight to Fiji we got to Auckland full of excitement about parting ways with the Bartmobile and sleeping in a real bed for a change. Things didn't really go that well, here's the story! We had made an "arrangement" with the fella whose hostel we crashed at when we were originally in Auckland. As we left the city after buying the van, he said to us that we could park up in his carpark for a tiny 10 bucks a night until we sold the van and wanted a room there. When we pulled up the car park was chocker full of vans and cars and the man we had left had become a shadow of his former coolness. With excuses about his boss making him work a lot ... read more
After another night-time ferry ride, we found ourselves back in Windy Wellington. This time we checked it out a bit more thoroughly as we had some more time to do it all in. Here are the pics with their matching mini stories.......... read more
What else is there really to comment on about the famed Marlborough Wine region, except the glorious wine they have here! We were so bowled over by it's magnificence, that we ended up staying for at least 2 hours in one of these fine wineries getting incredibly geeky on tasting a couple of pre-pay "wine platters" complete with a huge file that you are given to compare your palette findings with those of the wine maker and any reviews they have received from important wine dudes. We were shameless! Punching the air in triumph when we discovered we had correctly identified hyacinth nodes, or hints of pine cone after cross referencing our own notes with those in the file. I think this officially makes us wine geeks. (There might be pictures, if so, coming soonish...I think) ... read more
We had a whale of a time in Kaikoura - literally! After what was turning out to be a stormy day we were both dead pleased to find out that the out-at-sea conditions were in the 'perfect' classifications for optimum whale watching. We spent the rest of the day in the boat jetting from one spot to antoher as different sperm whales were coming to the surface for a big breath of air before diving back down to feed on giant squids and crill. Kaikoura is one of only 2 places in the world where the ground plummets rapidly into an under water canyon - the one in Kaikoura goes from getting deep from the shore steadily to about 90 meters then the continental shelf drops off to a staggering 900 meters. Due to the warmth ... read more
After the nature burst we told you about back at Mount Cook, we soon found ourselves in the city of Christchurch. Instead of doing our usual activities of checking out museums and things, we decided to simply take the city in by spending the day mooching around it. As the day went on we found ourselves saying how it was like being in a very warm Cambridge. There are lots of similarities - they're both University cities, the architecture is very similar, the parks, begonia showing, it's famed for punting, and it rained. Have a look through these pictures which I think summarize our short time here........... read more
