Welcome!

Welcome to our faithful readers who have been with us before, and a special welcome to new readers of the travel blog.

This blog is about a trip to Australia and New Zealand that Joe and I and my brother Ricky will be taking in January/February. A bit of explanation of the title: The people of Australia are very fond of vocabulary shortcuts: brekkie for breakfast, sunnies for sunglasses, cossie for costumes, tassie for Tasmania, aussie for Australians. That explains the Aussies part of the title, but what about Kiwis?  Apparently Aussies refer to the people of New Zealand as Kiwis. So our trip will involve visiting with Aussies and Kiwis.

As some of you know, we previously took a trip to Australia a number of years ago. We spent a month there and explored much of the country. We decided we would return some day to see the parts that we missed: southeastern Australia, including Canberra (the capital), Tasmania, and also to visit nearby (relatively speaking) New Zealand. So when my brother Ricky in Atlanta informed us that a group was offering a cruise that begins in Sydney, Australia and tours most of New Zealand, we decided to join him (and the group.)

Since there are places in Australia that we'd like to see that are not included in the group/tour cruise, we decided to go a few weeks early and do some sightseeing on our own before joining up with the group in Sydney.

We will drive to Atlanta and fly out of Atlanta with Ricky on Jan. 10. We will fly to Sydney (Australia) through Dallas, and then continue on to Melbourne, where we will begin our adventure. ("We're going on an adventure!" - line from Lord of the Rings, filmed in New Zealand.) We will attend the Australian Tennis Open that will be taking place in Melbourne while we are there. We'll also take a few days to see the sights of Tassie (Australian for Tasmania), and then we'll drive (on the wrong side of the road!) from Melbourne to Sydney by way of Canberra through the Snowy Mountains. Note: Snowy Mountains is the name of the mountains. Hopefully they will not actually be snowy this time of year (summer in Australia). We will visit with family in Canberra (a niece and sister-in-law).

Once in Sydney, we will join the group called Ageless Adventures for a fun weekend in and around the Sydney area. Then we'll board the cruise ship (Celebrity Edge) and head east to New Zealand, where we'll visit places like Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Napier, Picton, Tauranga, Auckland, and more. We'll enjoy some of the great things New Zealand has to offer, such as a Journey to Middle Earth (where Lord of the Rings was filmed), panoramic drives along scenic coastlines and countrysides, botanical gardens, rose gardens, a geothermal park, Mt. Victoria, and a Jetboat ride on a thermal lake.

Stay tuned: the fun begins on Jan. 10. We won't arrive in Australia until Jan. 12 (due to crossing the International Date Line, we lose a day.) So the first blog post likely won't be until then or a (jet lag) day or two later. I guess that means the fun doesn't actually begin until Jan. 12, because 20 or more hours of flight time is definitely NOT fun!