New Zealand

I know - a heart shaped word cloud - cheesy....

BUT.... there was no New Zealand country shape to choose and I tried a Dolphin but all the words didn't really fit.... and ... well... I did love the place... so cheesy heart shaped word cloud it is.....

I said before on a blog post (as we left the south island) about the scenic diversity, serenity, peacefulness and kindness I felt throughout New Zealand. We luckily choose a great company to tour with, and I would highly recommend Flying Kiwi to anyone.... we also, I think, got extremely lucky with our fellow travellers... we had a diverse mix of American's, Canadians, Germans and English (with some other nationalities too), and a diverse mix of ages too (the youngest to get on the bus was a 16 German guy, and the oldest a really lovely and interesting guy from the US who was mid 60s. For the most part we all got on well, it was sad times when someone left the bus! Whilst it was tiring to do the 28 day non stop and mainly camping tour it was just the best way to see some of the well known and lesser known places in New Zealand.

Here are my favourite pictures - again they are all somewhere on PicasaWeb but there are several hundred on there!!.... and apologies as I have added quite a few here!!

At the end of our holiday we flew back from Los Angeles with Air New Zealand (which by the way was a great service and I would recommend them too), there was an advert played before each movie - whilst it is for a sports clothes retailer it could quite as easily be for New Zealand itself. I love this advert (I don't often say that!)....

Australia ....

We spent just under three months in Australia; some lovely weeks with friends in Perth, Melbourne in time for the Australian Open and Adelaide for the Tour Down Under, and a couple of weeks in Sydney to have a float around that great city.

My Word Cloud of our time in Australia

Here are some of my favourite pictures - I took rather a lot and these can all be found in Picasa here.

Margaret River:

Perth and Surrounds:

 Melbourne:

Adelaide (this was my favourite place):

And Finally Sydney!!