Travel

Travel resources

Some useful sources of travel information and ideas are:

The following web sites are useful in planning a trip to the UK:

New Zealand citizens should register their overseas travel on the official MFAT web site SafeTravel

For flight search with a visual presentation I thought Hipmunk was great. This was revived by Flight Penguin, a browser extension.

For multi-modal transport from A to B try Rome2rio

The AA New Zealand Travel Guides provide a useful reference source for our local destinations.

My holiday travel

I enjoy travelling on my holidays, particularly to Australia, North America and Europe, but also within New Zealand.

My first international travel was as a child with my parents to Norfolk Island. We flew there on a Qantas DC-4. This was followed by a holiday in Surfers Paradise.

When we lived in South Otago we had a holiday cottage at Luggate near Wanaka NEW. My Uncle and Aunt lived part of the year at Arrowtown NEW, near Queenstown, and from there I learnt to snow ski at Coronet Peak, the Remarkables and Cardrona. 

In May 1980 with my parents I visited Fiji, Western Samoa and Tonga - the latter was my favourite and the subject of my history dissertation research. A good source of information in the region is the Discover page from the Pacific Tourism Organisation.

I had relatives in London, England, and have spent some time there on two visits. On the first trip in 1986 I had five months (July to December) OE away from New Zealand travelling over via Hawaii, San Francisco, Alberta and British Columbia in Western Canada, and the North East of the USA, down as far as Williamsburg and up as far as Boston before crossing the Atlantic. 

I got up to Scotland a couple of times staying in Edinburgh and visiting Glasgow and Aberdeen.

I did a tour around Western Europe with the tour company Insight Vacations. We crossed the English Channel on a hovercraft, stayed in such cities as Amsterdam, Venice and Nice, and took a short cruise on the Rhine.

I really loved Switzerland (I had a fun time travelling around the country using a rail pass) so the SBB site brings back great memories of a very effective transport system (not only the railway but also the lake steamers). I went skiing at Jungfraujoch and travelled on the Glacier Express from Zermatt to St. Moritz. I even managed to get a ride in the back of a Swiss Army truck around a landslide that had closed the railway line and road between Lucerne and Interlaken. 

Other highlights in 1986 included the King's College Chapel in Cambridge, England, the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome and Pompeii. My return was via Hong Kong and Japan, where I got down from Tokyo to Kyoto.

In 1988 (May) we mounted a family expedition with my parents, and uncle and aunt to the Western USA and Canada. Picking up a rental Ford Crown Victoria station wagon in Denver, we circled down through Taos and Santa Fe and across to Grand Canyon National Park, then down to Phoenix and across to San Diego. We headed up to Anaheim (Disneyland) and then Mammoth Lakes and Yosemite National Park before reaching Sacramento, Seattle and Vancouver. After visiting the Whistler Resort and Victoria, we then headed across via Lake Okanagan and Banff National Park to Calgary. From there it was down through Helena, Yellowstone National Park (not long before the devastating fires) and Grand Teton National Park to Salt Lake City.  We finished our drive via Aspen and Vail before returning to Denver to fly home.  

On my second holiday in Europe in 1992/93 (December to February) I covered a considerable part of England and flew over to Paris in France for few days. Dartmouth was one of the highlights for me and I also got into the centres of Liverpool and Manchester.

In 1996 I got back on holiday to the USA again, this time to make second visits to San Francisco, Washington DC and New York. I travelled between the latter two cities by Amtrack.

I subsequently made long weekend trips to Ayers Rock (Uluru) and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia, and to the Blue Mountains (the weather was terrible!), Central Coast and Port Stephens in New South Wales.

My holiday to Australia in 1997 was to Port Douglas, staying at Treetops, and Cairns, staying at the Holiday Inn. I had a boat trip on the Daintree River, went out to the Great Barrier Reef (Agincourt Reef to be precise on a Quicksilver catamaran) and drove up to the Atherton Tableland.

My 1998 New Zealand holiday was to Wanaka. 

My 1999 holiday was a trip with my mother to England via Los Angeles (staying at The Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica). We got to Hamleys and Harrods, took a cruise on the Thames from Greenwich to Westminister and visited the South Kensington Museums in London. In Wells we stayed at the Market Place Hotel and from there we visited Longleat and The Glastonbury Area. We drove down to Cornwall over Dartmoor and stayed at the Cliff Head Hotel near St. Austel. We then drove over Exmoor on our way to North Devon where we stayed at the Woolacombe Bay Hotel. On the way back to London we stayed in Faringdon. From there we visited the Cotswolds and Oxford. We also visited Legoland Windsor. 

In 2001 on a return visit to the South Island we went to Puzzling World just out of Wanaka. 

My wife and I made a trip to Central Europe in 2018, visiting Montenegro, for an amazing family wedding, Croatia (Dubrovnik), Hungary (Budapest), Austria (Vienna), Czechia (Prague), Italy (Rome, Florence and Venice) and Germany (Munich). We included a couple of tours with Insight Vacations.

I usually used to book my personal travel through Thomas Cook (taken over in New Zealand by Harvey World Travel and now HelloWorld). In Whangarei we are using YOU Travel.

My business travel

Over the years my work with the Ministry of Transport took me overseas to: 

My business travel was booked through Air New Zealand and then Atlantic Pacific RADIUS. 

Wellington

After graduating from university, I lived from 1981 to 2017 in Wellington where I worked for the government in the capital of New Zealand. The Wellington City Council site has useful information.

Whangarei

We have lived back in Whangarei since I retired in 2017. The Whangarei District Council site has useful information.

Maps

New Zealand Topographical Maps (mobile version) are available online.

GeoDataHub from the University of Auckland Library - not easy but I have found the old New Zealand aeronautical charts on here.

OpenStreetMap provides global coverage.

Other interesting map sites include:

If you enjoy geography like me, try out the quizzes at Geoguessr where you try to mark on a map as close as possible to the location of a Google Maps Street View photograph that you are shown.

Motoring 

I currently drive a 2018 model Honda CRV AWD Sport Sensing. This replaced a 2015 Honda Euro Civic L Limited built by Honda in the UK. The Civic replaced a 2001 Honda CRV.  The company's New Zealand, UK, USA and Honda Innovations web sites are of interest.

We also own a Holden Cascada convertible. This replaced a Toyota Prius c hybrid, an ideal commuting car which had replaced a Mitsubishi Grandis. Prior to that we had a Toyota RAV4 after a Ford  Ka.

We enjoyed watching the UK motoring programme Top Gear (it has a second site on the BBC homepages).

However,  in Wellington I used to regularly commute into work by train. 

To Museums and Zoos 

To Airports 

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Last updated on 17 February 2025