Rome, Amalfi Coast & Cinque Terre The day before we were due to leave the east coast I realised I was a day ahead of myself and wasn’t supposed to be arriving in Rome on a Thursday, it was meant to be a Friday! Eeek! No accommodation was booked. A quick look on Airbnb and we found a perfect place halfway between the east and west coasts. On the way there Little R spied a beautiful old town out…
Venice and San Marino Last time BK and I were in Europe a highlight of ours was Venice, we visited in November on my 25th birthday. So I was looking forward to returning but didn’t want the same kind of trip repeated. At least it was going to be warmer this time! We decided to stay out at an outlying beach area. Then got an all day pass on the ferries and spent a lot of time out…
It was an easy drive back out of Croatia, we passed through border control, made a quick stop to buy a vignette, (which is a sticker that goes on your windscreen, we think it’s instead of tolls), then onto some beautiful big highways which we found totally bizarre because on our way to Croatia we had already driven through Slovenia and the main road was like a rural back road in New Zealand so we were surprised to find highways…
After our friends left for London we stayed in Split but moved a little further south of the city on the coast. The views and sunsets were amazing. We spent a few days catching up on laundry, schoolwork and rest. We found a fortress high high high on a hill. We decided we’d climb it, so off C and I climbed while BK got left behind helping little R. A looooong 45 minutes later we reached the top. After…
We picked up our 2018 Peugeot 208 in Geneva, Switzerland and started driving. Wow the highways here are expensive but amazing! Europe appears to be just one big never ending highway. On our first day of traveling we spent NZ$153 on tolls, half of that was to go through the Mont Blanc tunnel. This is an amazing engineering feat which is 11.6km long and has a ton of rules including the slowest speed you can do (50km/h) as well as…
Must be time for a summary! Sleeping Number of beds slept in = 22 Best bed – Ho Chi Minh City Worst bed – Hong Kong Flying Number of flights flown = 15 Number of airlines used = 7 Best flight – The first Emirates one out of NZ to Melbourne even though it was delayed 2 hours Worst flight – Colombo to Dubai on FlyDubai Best take off – Dubai to Istanbul Worst take off – Istanbul to…
At stupid o’clock (4.30am) we got up and headed to the airport to depart Sri Lanka. The process was slow going, we arrived 2 hours early but only got checked into our flight 50 minutes before it departed. We were happy to arrive in Dubai and celebrated that we had come so far under budget in Sri Lanka by getting a taxi to our accommodation. We arrived too early to check in, so we took turns staying with our…
We find out that social media has been cut off due to an incident in Kandy while we were there, a small truck knocked off a wing mirror of a tuktuk. The truck driver was very sorry and gave money to repair it, but one was Muslim and one was Buddhist, and so started riots and not very nice things. Therefore the government locked down social to stop incorrect info and scare mongering being spread. At first I thought…
Leaving Hong Kong was an experience. We found the same express bus back to the airport, got our transport cards refunded then checked in. I was given a map of some kind with my boarding passes but took no notice of either the map or the boarding passes. We then proceeded to try to find our gate… Turns out Hong Kong is a massive airport. We cleared immigration then found ourselves in an underground train station, um? Is this where…
Our time in Hong Kong started with a very smooth travel day from Taiwan. We took the train to the airport, checked in (both very efficient) found our gate, sat around, loaded onto a plane, ate lunch (thanks Cathay Pacific!) arrived into Hong Kong, processed through customs, got cash, got a SIM card, found a bus that was express into the city, got dropped on the side of the road (got to love those times when we land on the…