So we left the alpacas and were really hungry – not because we thought about eating the alpacas, because it was late afternoon and we hadn’t eaten since we left the house at 10. So we drove into Hamilton and broke down and ate at a McDonalds. And NZ McDonalds put US ones to shame… Continue reading Day #7 – Auckland Day #5 – just getting started

We’ve spent time in downtown Auckland as well as driven north and west, today we decided to explore the area south of Auckland. And we discovered traffic jams NZ-style. What should have been about a 90 minute turned out to take more than 2.5 hours. Wasn’t a lot of cars – it’s just that the… Continue reading Day #7 – Auckland Day #5 – Goin’ South

My Fitbit says that I’ve taken 19,346 (9.51 miles) and climbed the equivalent of 51 flights of stairs. It’s nice to finally be sitting quietly in the house! After a quick ‘make your own breakfast’ (grilled cheese sandwiches, yogurt, etc), we headed out for the Auckland Zoo. What a great zoo – well laid out, great exhibits,… Continue reading Day #6 – Auckland Day #4 – Happy Boxing Day!

The brunch was as much fun as it was delicious! Everyone got a Christmas cracker (British rradition that we picked up on our first trip to London – you can buy them at World Market – please google if you are not familiar) We got little gifts (tape measure, marbles, etc) and had fun with… Continue reading Day #5 – Auckland Day #3 (part 2)

Happy Holidays! We spent the day consuming a huge amount of calories and then trying to walk them off. Don’t think that we succeeded, but it was fun anyway. The day started with the kids discovering that Santa visits good children in New Zealand, too. After a delicious breakfast (we are cooking meals at the… Continue reading Day #5 – Auckland Day #3 – Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

We have always enjoyed traveling with our kids – they are both great people, looking out for one another, willing to try (or eat) new things and it’s always lots of fun and laughs. But traveling with adult children has added a new dimension. When we started traveling with the kids, we usually brought more… Continue reading We love traveling with our (adult) children

(Note — this guest post is brought to you by Heather, to help with some of the end-of-day blog writing) Today is Christmas Eve in Auckland and started out, like yesterday did, with intermittent rain showers.  Good thing we don’t believe in rushing out first thing in the morning (we are on vacation, after all),… Continue reading Day #4 – Auckland (Christmas Eve)

(sorry for the boring headers, but there are a lot of days and places on the tip and this is helping to keeping things straight). After meeting Dion and learning how to set and turn off alarms, we cleaned a little and changed clothes (it had been almost 30 hours in the same clothes) and… Continue reading Day #3 – Auckland #1 (part 2)

We were pleased that it only took about an hour to clear passport control, get our bags and clear customs. The women who checked our passports was very funny. She asked where we going after New Zealand and made a face when we told her next stop was Australia and said that we should skip… Continue reading Day #3 – Auckland Day #1 – getting the family back together

Since the flight crossed the International Date Line, we left Houston on a Wednesday night and arrived in Auckland, New Zealand on a Friday morning. So Day #2 was getting from point A to point B. We had a pretty good plan (we thought) to minimize the effects of jet lag. We’ll find out if… Continue reading Day #2 (sort of) – Flying to New Zealand