Auckland

What can be said about Auckland?

In some ways, it's like stepping back to the 70s... yet it is a modern city with all the usual things. I must admit it all seemed a bit smaller than I imagined, and we did struggle a bit for things to do...

The day before we left, we spent a day on a tour to Waitomo and Rotorua. Waitomo is home to some spectacular caves, including one filled with glow worms, who give off a weird green-blue light. In Rotorua, we stopped off at a wildlife park, where we managed to see kiwis (amongst other things), before spending some time at the foul smelling geysers.

Must admit though, it was odd when we left New Zealand, flew for 12 hours and still landed in America several hours before we took off from NZ...

Sydney

After 27 hours of travelling, we arrived at our hotel in Sydney at 7am. Unfortunately, the check in time was from 2pm... so we got some breakfast and wandered around the city and harbour areas. By 11am we were knackered, so we chanced it and went back to the hotel... Hurrah! They had a room ready!

What have we done here? Well, aside from the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge (no climb, unfortunately... Phil's vertigo put paid to that!), we had a couple of great days out down at Bondi Beach and up in the Blue Mountains, where we stopped en route at a wildlife park. The 'winter' weather was brilliant too :-)

For a city this size, we were surprised to find how little 'bear-life' there is... bears only seem to come out on a Friday night. Maybe the Sydneysiders prefer houseparties...