Travel News

We are working our way back to KC. Waiting in Memphis for our last flight. Saw some great tennis yesterday. The Bryan Bros, the Blake/DelPotro marathon match, and some other matches. Great atmosphere, people, event. Already planning to come again.

We've spent the last 2 days watching tennis. The first day, we were glad to have tickets to one of the indoor stadiums and got the watch Andy Roddick, and other good matches while the outside matches got rained out. Today, we moved around and caught several matches. Jockivich, Djockivich, and a heartbreaker with Oudin.Last day tomorrow, and then the long ride home.

We arrived in Melbourne today with some drama. Lyla had an orange in there bag, that she wanted to throw away as we were getting off the plane (no fresh fruits to be brought into Australia), and I said, "no, it will be fine." Well, the inspector saw it, and sent us to another inspector, who wanted to keep the orange and throw away all of my sand (I had several bags, bottles). She finally, took some of it and ran hot water over the sand to "kill" any live organisms, and then let us go. She made us feel like we were trying to take down the country or something. All over and stupid orange.
The cool, windy, cloudy weather that followed us all over New Zealand, followed us to Melbourne. They have had record heat for the last few weeks, and today, it was cool and tonight it was cool, cloudy and rainy. Same forecast for tomorrow.
We got to watch an exhibition match today as some of the tennis players got together and raised money for the relief effort in Haiti. It was quite good, and we had fun watching the players.

We arrived in Christchurch yesterday afternoon. Today, we walked a couple of gardens, went to the art museum, and took a bike tour of the downtown area. Our guide was a young gal who has grown up in Christchurch and was quite informative about the history and the area. Tonight we found a Burmese restaurant for dinner. It was great food we had never had before. We are up at 3:45AM tomorrow morning for our flight to Melbourne. Looks like to cool weather is going to follow us over there!

Kids in a swimming club freezing in the ocean. They wore cute little caps, but as soon as they could they ran out of the ocean and up to the bath house.

We drove over toNapier today to have a look around.This town was leveled by an earthquake in 1931,and rebuilt. The city center is all art deco style and the buildiings are great. It was nice and warm today, so that was a change. Tomorrow is a driving day.

Last night we stayed at a roadside in, tonight we are staying at a new Hilton (used some of those points). What a difference.

We headed south today and drove through towns like Whangamata, Katikati, Tauranga and ended up in Cambridge (settled by people from England). Great wide beaches. But the wind made it very cold. Even so, some people braved the cold air and water, and went in. Not us.It was very cold. There are some very nice summer homes along the east coast. I mean NICE. The ocean views are great, and the beaches clean. The GPS guide is giving us some great information about the area we are driving through.

This is a view from our room at the Hilton Auckland. We had a great stay here and now we set our car pointed south today. Auckland is such a clean city, easy to get around. It is like a big town, not an international gateway.

While readig a recent travel magazine, I ran across a new company that is called Kruse. They rent you a GPS devise that you put in your car and plug in. Then tune the radio into a certain frequency.It acts like a audio tour guide. While you are driving, it points out items of interest along the road. Today, we took a very good tour of the city of Aukland. As good as one we would have had a real guide. $10 nz PER DAY. A great bargain, and very helpful.

Tomorrow, we head south out of Auckland.

We arrived about sunset yesterday after nearly 30 hours of plane rides. Minor hitches, but we got here. Today is nice and sunny. We wook a walking tour of Auckland with anice gentleman. Lot's of interesting history. New Zealand is not an old country. Europeans came in the 1840's and settled in. Auckland is clean and the peopleare friendly. Have to get used to the sterring wheel on the right and driving on the left again.

We woke up today to sub zero temperatures, but look forward to sunny and 70 later this week in Auckland.