Arriving in Melbourne

The view from the plane as we arrived in Melbourne. Parts of Australia have had a severe drought for up to 10 years. Melbourne is one such area. Somehow they're managing to keep the city beautiful, though.

The Tramcar Restaurant, Melbourne

G'day! Here we are on the tramcar, before the liquids had flowed too freely.

Dateline: Melbourne, Australia

The photo is of the cathedral in Christchurch, taken around 7:00 a.m.  Daylight arrives late in New Zealand.

Yesterday's flight over "the ditch" from New Zealand to Melbourne, AU, took 3 1/2 hours, so the Tasman seems to be more than a ditch. We expected to find Melbourne quite hot, since it's at a higher latitude than the South Island was, but it's actually a tad cool. I guess we'll find Alice Springs, etc. MUCH warmer, though,...like in the 90's.

This morning we took a tour of the city, then at 1:00 it really got interesting: we boarded the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant for a tour of the city (again) while eating an elegant meal. Our waiter was a riot and delivered one-liners which were hilarious to us, because we were hearing them for the first time and because he was serving us champagne followed by wine followed by rum and coke followed by Drambuie. Enough said about that.

But the meal itself: An appetizer of cream, liver, and cognac pate and another of roasted red capsicum dip

Entrees of grilled kangaroos loin and smoked salmon. I opted for the salmon while Ken chose the kangaroo (Please don't tell Camden, Violet, and Griffin). I tasted the kangaroo, though, and it was very tender and tasty

Main courses: Chargrilled breast of chicken (for me)

Prime eye fillet of beef (for Ken)

A selection of Australian cheeses

Phew. We all staggered off the tram and walked back to the hotel.

This morning, though, we visited an opal store. I'm sporting a new opal ring on my finger, in fact.

Tomorrow we're taking a day-long tour outside the city.

Melbourne's original city planner decided the streets should be 99 feet wide. The Powers that Be disagreed and ordered the planner to decrease the width. He simply turned the plans upside down, making the width read "66" feet, the Powers approved the plans...and the streets are 99 feet wide. It's a well-planned city. We visited a botanical garden where we saw amazing tuberous begonias and gloxinias. Lynn and Jim: Please tell Erik we saw a selection of Cavellini papers in the botanical garden gift shop. I asked to take a photo of them, but the clerk said photos weren't allowed.

Christchurch, NZ

Greetings from Christchurch, NZ. I remember years ago I was standing at an airline checkin, and the gentlemen in front of me had luggage tags which read "Christchurch, New Zealand." I thought that was such an amazing part of the world to be from, and I hoped I'd see it some day.

Yesterday we drove up the western coast from Queenstown to Mt. Cook, then headed east to Christchurch. Beautiful scenery all the way, including snow-capped mountains. We'll fly to Melbourne later today and spend 10 days or so with the Aussies. We take four flights within the country while there because it's such a huge land and there is so much to see.

Our dinner with the host family was definitely a highlight of NZ. Ian and Barbara are retired pharmacists. They have a home high on a hill overlooking the lake and the town. They served a delicious meal of roast lamb, fresh vegetables from their garden, and Pavlova for dessert. More about Pavlova later.

A humorous story from the dinner: Ian was talking about Christchurch, and he pronounced it "Krost Chitch," of course. Meg, also at the dinner with us, thought he was saying "cross stitch." Finally she said, "Where is Cross Stitch located, anyway?" She thought it was a village in NZ. We laughed so hard we almost cried.

Prices here are very high, with "petrol" about $7 a gallon (Is it up that high back home yet?!?, a simple t-shirt about $34, etc. I have bought only yarn, as you might have guessed.

I'll hurriedly try to answer a couple of e-mails in my few minutes left. I'm still under the gun with computer time. It's still 75 cents a minute in our hotel room, so I'm at the hotel internet center, where it's $2 for 10 minutes.

Oh, as I was walking around Queenstown two days ago, I suddenly remembered "hic" is spelled like that, not like this: hick. Temporary brain malfunction. I seem to have more and more of them these days.

Next post: from Australia! Everyone in our tour group has said how seeing Australia and New Zealand have been lifelong dreams.

Photos added

Sorry I had to post the photos below individually. The connection kept fizzling when I tried to load them onto one post.

I'm off to visit a yarn shop around the corner, full of luscious yarns.

On Milford Sound

Sailing on Milford Sound,  on the South Island's west coast in Fjorland National Park.

Sheep shearing

Sheep shearing at the Agrodome, Rotorua, on the North Island of NZ.

Lake Wakapitu

This is the view of Lake Wakapitu from our hotel balcony, Queenstown, NZ.

Queenstown, NZ on the South Island

It pains me not to be able to post any photos today, because this area is SO beautiful. We flew down here on Wednesday. First we visited the Agrodome that morning, where we saw all breeds of sheep and witnessed a sheep being sheared. This was a new experience for 99% of the audience, but not for me. It was still interesting, though. Our flight from the North Island to the South was very scenic, with the lovely rolling hills of the former and the high mountains of the latter. We're in Queenstown, on Lake Wakapitu, and our hotel room overlooks the lake. The first evening here we took a steamer across the lake to a restaurant. That was a pleasant evening with the temperature very mild. Yesterday was a full day with a coach ride to Milford Sound. The sound is actually a fjord, but it's called a sound for some reason. We saw breathtaking views the entire trip, with rugged mountains all around us. We got a rain shower as we neared the fjord, and that immediately produced literally hundreds of waterfalls cascading down the sheer cliffs. What a sight. Once at the fjord, we boarded a boat and took a cruise for a couple of hours. It was a 12-hour day, so we were pooped by the time we got back to the hotel.

Today we'll take a wine-tasting tour in the afternoon (hick!), then have dinner in the home of a local family in the evening. Tomorrow we'll drive up to Mt. Cook, then go on to Christchurch for the night. The next day we cross the "ditch," as the Kiwis and Aussies call the Tasman Sea, and arrive in Australia. I'm sure we're in for a very different experience there.

A couple of tidbits: Many woollen garments here are made of sheep's wool and possum. Yes, possum. Possums are a pest (which our tour guide calls a "pist") here, destroying acres of anything that grows, but recently it has been discovered the possum fur makes a very nice addition to woollens.

Toilets: Most toilets have two flush buttons. You can choose a full flush or a half flush. As our tour guide said, here they have a little ditty that goes like this: If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down. I think you get my drift. It's a water-saving device, and it's quite clever, really.

We continue to have very mild weather, with temperatures at least 70 each day. Today is supposed to be rainy, but I figured our luck would run out eventually.

That's it for now. I hope to post some photos here soon.

Auckland to Rotorua

We had a full day today, for sure. But this first (actually, second) photo was taken yesterday, on the West Coast during the eco-tour. 

Now to move on: We left Auckland this morning and headed south through rolling hills to the Waitomo Caves, where we took a tour of the caves. One particular chamber looked like a cathedral; the stalagtites and stalagmites formed what looked like a pipe organ, and the ceiling arched high above. There have actually been concerts held there, especially at Christmas time, with an audience capacity of 200. That gives you some idea of the size of this chamber. After the walking tour, we boarded a boat and took an eerily quiet ride along the underground river to view the glow worms on the cave ceilings overhead. It was like looking up at the sky on a crystal-clear night and watching the stars, except the glow worms were much more thickly grouped than the stars. 

After leaving the caves, we continued south and then turned east to Rotorua. This is where we are spending the night...with much more reasonable internet connection fees than we faced in Auckland, by the way. Rotorua is a Maori resort town. The Maori were the first settlers of New Zealand, way back many hundreds of years ago. No one knows for certain what part of the South Pacific they came from, but a Maori guide told us this afternoon, with certainty on his part, that they immigrated from Tahiti. He feels certain about this because the Maori and the Tahitian languages are so similar. They would have arrived in New Zealand by boat, of course, and its hard to imagine how ancient man found the courage to sail the South Pacific for hundreds of miles in open boats.

We stopped at Rotorua's geothermal park to view the geysers and bubbling mud pools, then continued on to our hotel. (Shoot. I just uploaded the photo of the geyser, but it isn't placed on this entry where I'd thought it would be.) Well, anyway, the geysers and mudpools were fascinating, and the smell of sulphur in the air was strong. This place was like a mini Yellowstone...a mini-mini-mini Yellowstone, actually.

Tomorrow we'll tour this area, then around noontime we'll fly to the South Island to Queenstown. Saturday it's on to Christchurch, then Sunday is the big day: We fly to Australia!

It's much cooler here in Rotorua this evening than we've been used to since arriving in NZ. The tour guide advised us to dress in layers tomorrow, which is quite a switch. 

Let's see if I have another photo or two to share:

Yup, I should have known it: the last photo I added has just crowded the other two aside, so it's now the first one you see. I need to learn how to use Blogger, apparently. 

One final interesting tidbit: Bills here aren't made of paper; they're made of polymer. I didn't even notice this until someone pointed it out. They're expected to last much longer than paper money. 

Oh, another thing. I guess I'm even more tired than I thought, because I almost forgot to tell you about this evening. We had a "Hangi" dinner and concert, put on by the Maoris. The food, which had been prepared the Maori way, was plentiful, but it was the concert that we especially enjoyed. Several Maoris sang and danced. Their voices were powerful and their dancing expertly synchronized. 

I guess that's all for Tuesday, March whatever.

NZ West Coast

Today we took an eco-tour to the West Coast, about 30 minutes from Auckland. We saw many beautiful sights, so of which reminded us of Kauai's NaPali, and some which reminded us of the Oregon coast, such as this one I'm posting. We took a walk in a rain forest and learned about many interesting trees native to New Zealand. Great day, all 'round. Tomorrow we'll be taking the "coach" south. 

Auckland, Day Two

Ken and I fought the urge to nap after our arrival in Auckland yesterday, and that paid off with a good, full night's sleep. We spent yesterday walking down to the harbor, having our "Easter dinner" at a Chinese restaurant, then walking to the Auckland museum, which has wonderful artifacts from the Polynesian cultures. It amazes me to see the beautiful artwork of long-ago peoples. Humans have always had the need to create beautiful things.

Today we'll take a morning bus (coach, I mean. Here one never calls a coach a "bus) tour of the city. We've signed up for an optional tour to the rain forest of the west coast this afternoon.

Breakfast included fresh kiwis, melons, pears that actually TASTE like they're supposed to. It's hard to get fresh fruit that takes authentic back home this time of year.

My posts are short and picture-less at the moment, because this hotel charges by the minute for internet service. I'm hoping we'll stay at a hotel with free or reasonable service before long.

Auckland, New Zealand

Greetings from Auckland, New Zealand, where the sun is shining brightly on a 75-degree day. We arrived at 5:30 Easter morning, when it was 12:30 p.m. on Saturday for folks back home. We had a very smooth flight on an Airbus 330.

We've spent today taking a walking tour of the city on our own: to the harbor (harbour), to the park, and to the Auckland Museum. Tomorrow we'll explore outside the city.

The scenery is spectacular and the Kiwis are friendly.

More later....

Row 43

The next time you book a flight and you learn the aircraft is a Boeing 777, avoid sitting in  row 43. Do what you have to do. Walk if you have to. But don't allow yourself to be assigned a seat in row 43.

We were originally assigned seats, on the Washington to LA leg of our journey,  in row 7 or thereabouts, but when we arrived at the Portland airport we learned our flight from Portland to Washington-Dulles would be delayed due to or by "ATC," which I assume means air traffic control. That would mean missing our Washington to Los Angeles flight, so the lady at check-in, who was, by the way, a trainee, or perhaps a custodian assigned to fill in for the regular, highly-trained check-in lady,  put us on a later flight to LA. We thought a crisis had been averted, until Ken double-checked our luggage claim tickets and discovered our bags were being sent on one flight while our bodies were being sent on another. Not good.

Back to check-in we went, only to be told that our original Portland to Washington flight would no longer be delayed, so we could fly on it after all. Yea!, or so we thought.

As I said earlier, our original seat assignments on the flight to LA were in row 7. I remember thinking how these would surely be pleasant seats. I'd be able to read or knit or maybe even combat DVT by doing regular leg exercises.

I bet Ken looked at our reassigned boarding passes while still in Portland and saw the handwriting on the wall. But he has learned over the years that it's best to let me discover impending doom on my own. I didn't look at them, therefore, because I like to be an optimist and I can't see any sense in worrying ahead of time. I can do a dandy job of worrying when the time comes.

Our seats, 43 D and 43 E, were in the last row on the freakin' plane. And row 43 isn't a REAL row. It's a little leftover space at the back of the plane which the design engineers couldn't decide what to do with. They hate to waste aircraft space, and they like to make sure our airlines make as much money as possible, so they decided that this leftover space, not fit for luggage storage, would be dandy for human storage. 

To  my left sat a nice gentleman with his own set of problems: his secretary had booked him on a flight from Washington to LA on the 20th, sure, but she'd booked it for APRIL 20, not March 20. He wondered why the check-in clerk had said, "My, we're here early, aren't we?" when he arrived  to check in. He didn't realize he'd arrived a month early, so the powers that be had to scramble to find him a seat on the March 20 flight. Clearly he, too, had been given one of the left-over, assign only when all-else fails, seats.

To my right sat Ken. To his right sat a long-legged gentleman who looked to be at least seven feet tall. He kept his knees in the aisle for the entire flight.

We were four fellow-sufferers. It's funny how common suffering makes people bond in an instant.

We were packed in so tightly that the man to my left whispered, at one point, "Perhaps if we breathed in unison, that would help."

At one point I leaned down to try to rearrange my carry-on and laptop, stored under the seat ahead of me, so I could have the teensiest smidgen of legroom and, perhaps, thwart DVT. As I leaned forward, the guy in the seat ahead of me decided to tip back his seat. For a few terrifying seconds I was pinned in a folded-forward position.

Then there were the angry lions in the cage behind us. At least I thought they were angry lions because they roared incessantly. About 30 minutes into the flight I realized the roaring was actually the toilets being flushed. Four toilets abutted the wall behind us.

Because the seat ahead of me was practically pressing against my nose, my tri-focal lenses couldn't focus on anything: the little screen tracking our flight was a blur, the knitting needles and yarn were a blur, even the crossword puzzle in the back on the airline's magazine was a blur.

Five and a half LONG hours. And when the flight attendant handed me a napkin for my drink, do you know what I found printed on the back of it? "United Airlines. The most legroom of any airline." Ken and I had a good chuckle over that one.

But here are a couple of photos taken from our hotel room this morning:

Well, maybe not. Maybe later. Blogger doesn't seem to want to upload any photos for me at the moment.

 

This is what we'll be leaving behind (tons of snow and, most painfully, the dog) when we head to warmer climes on Thursday. Maybe spring will have arrived in Maine when we return.

(Just doing a trial run of uploading a photo to the blog.)

Our New Zealand/Australia itinerary

As luck would have it, I hadn't yet deleted the e-mails I sent out last week containing our itinerary, so here it is. Also as luck would have it, Channel 10 did a piece on New Zealand's North Islands this morning. I don't think Ken and I will have any trouble at all enjoying the beauty of New Zealand.

Our flights are listed below:

Mar 20 PWM to LAX (leaving Portland around 1:30 p.m.)

Mar 21 LAX (leaving at 8:00 p.m.) to Auckland, NZ. Arrive Auckland Mar. 23, 5:25 a.m. We lose a day on the way over but gain it back on the return flight.

Mar. 30-Leave Christchurch, NZ for Melbourne, AU

April 2-Leave Melbourne for Sydney, then on to Alice Springs

April 3-Leave Alice Springs for Ayers Rock

April 4-Leave Ayers Rock for Cairns

April 7-Leave Cairns for Sydney

April 10-Leave Sydney for LAX Arrive Los Angeles 4 hours before we leave Sydney!

April 11-LAX to PWM