Dear Friends, A brief visit to the wonderful city of Montreal gave me a chance to shoot a few photos of buildings and graffiti around town and to enjoy a little of the Summer Music Festival. The city is celebrating its 375th anniversary. The mighty St Lawrence River close to Montreal. Approaching the city of [...]
Dear friends, On Canada Day, this year celebrating 150 years, we began of course with a truly Canadian breakfast - pancakes, bacon, maple syrup and strawberries - YUM! We were joined by another old primary school friend, Judi and her husband Tim. I had found an old school photo from 60 years ago, and Pauline, [...]
Dear friends, North, south, east, west .... this last post about our great New Zealand Road trip, is to share some highlights, make some observations and thank all my friends and family who made it such a fun, fascinating and fabulous trip. We travelled through both the South and North Islands and covered some 10,000 [...]
Dear friends, The penultimate blog of the Road Trip is about a wonderful day on Waiheke Island in the Hauraki Gulf, just 40 minutes by ferry from Auckland city. We were excellently guided around the island by a new friend Kavin and in the company of our Auckland host Brian, and wow, what a great [...]
Dear Friends, The last destination on our road trip was Auckland where we had three full days to explore and enjoy the city and surrounds. I had thought to just do one blog, but decided that Auckland city deserved its own story as does the wonderful island of Waiheke where we spent a lovely day [...]
Dear friends, You cannot visit New Zealand and not want to learn about the history and culture of the Maori people of New Zealand, and where better to do this than in Rotorua, famous for its geothermal landscape and strong Maori traditions. The first evening we were in Rotorua we visited Tamaki Village, one of [...]
Dear friends, It has been almost perfect weather during our trip, and even the few rain days we've had have all coincided with 'driving days' so we've been lucky. Leaving the capital city, Wellington, we travelled north and after winding through the Rimutakas, stopped for a delicious big breakfast at Greytown on the recommendation of [...]
Hi friends, We made it to Nelson through some quite heavy rain, the clouds lifting and a weak sun shining through as we arrived. We were warmly welcomed by friends with whom we stayed for aa couple of days and enjoyed an extended family bbq, walking in the hills above the city, lunch at a [...]
Dear everyone, After our time in Christchurch and Akaroa, we travelled south from Christchurch, turning inland after an hour of so and headed west towards the MacKenzie country and the South Alps beyond that. Not so much traffic on the NZ roads ... The rolling green hills around Geraldine and Fairlie slowly gave way to tussock-clad [...]
Dear friends, One of the distinct pleasures of living in Asia is having the opportunity to celebrate the many colourful festivals which are an important part of life here. Perhaps none is as important across the whole region as the Chinese New Year. This year on 28 January we entered the Year of the Rooster [...]