DAY 8 - Paris

What do you do if you have one day in paris? Well we tried to pack in as much as we could. Starting with going to the Lourve. Once again we met the line of waiting people (we even went through the sneaky back entrance, apparently everyone knows the sneaky back entrance) The Louvre is huge. It is ornate. Frankly it is overwhelming, a tour guide later said to us don’t feel bad if after a couple of hours you just want to leave cause it is too much. So true. We made a beeline for the Mona Lisa, the crowd was impressive, however we were told off for trying to take photos of people trying to take photos of the painting. Go figure. We wandered around looking at the art seeped in history that we found difficult to comprehend coming from such a young country.

We then took the Metro in a quick tour of Notre Dame and back to the opera house ending back at the Eiffel Tower in time for our bike tour.

Before the bike ride Kath decided we needed a little local interaction. She needed a sim card. Easy enough. Wrong. The smartly turned out young man (cute lets call him Peire) spoke very little English and his friend marginally more. It ended up that the customer with a smattering more English helped us realise that Kaths phone was blocked so no sim card would work even the one she just brought. I liked the moment that the Piere rubbed his face in frustration and muttered under his breath in French, non verbal communication at its best. Even if we didn’t understand much most people were very friendly, the security guard at the bank talked to us about All Blacks in fact that is the main connection for most French people we met.

Anyway we got to go on a fat tyre bike tour around Paris. 40 people majority haven’t been on a bike in years, should be asking for trouble. Fortunately no accidents however the weather didn’t play ball half way around as we left the Lourve the heavens opened and we were drenched. A side stop in an outdoor café with strange French waiters that sung songs and smacked each other on the bottoms. Dripping into our crepes, chocolat and café au laits, we watched the rain pour down wondering if we would make it back. We did. Rain cleared and biked like experts on the roads, paths and parks back to the Eiffel Tower.

We had a tea under the Eiffel tower watched by a homeless man and many men waiting to try and sell us Eiffel tower key rings (tour guide Emma has set us the task of beating her 16 for 2 euro). The homeless man got some food and one lucky man got some of our money, Jess bargined her way to 20 for 3 euros. She tried to convince him she was doing him a favour taking so many off his hands. He did not agree but sold them anyway.

As we were too cheap to go to the live Carbert show or the night river cruise, we thought “hey lets take the metro back to the hotel” Huddling in our still damp clothes we poured over the metro map next to the stairs debating about where we were (Kath was right) Giving up we descended into the much warmer underground. We should have had our debate inside in retrospect. It was fairly simple to get to the right line. Unfortunately there were 15 stops before ours. After an epic train ride, a slight detour finding our hotel we reached our rooms to collapse and dream of Paris, or if you were Kath about missing flights from Mandeville.

(Sorry the internet where we are staying at the moment is painfully slow so we'll try put photos up sometime soon...)

DAY 7 - London to Paris

Bonjour!

Just a quick update, today has involved some travelling by Bus and Ferry and now we find ourselves in Paris - oh la la! Have already tried some French delicacies such as Frogs legs and Snails followed by a whistle stop tour of Paris and its many, many sights including of course the Eiffel tower! There are about 40 in our tour group - mainly girls...much to some people's dismay ;) A mixture of predominately Australians, some Americans and one other Kiwi.

Will post up photos of Paris and the adventures we get up to tomorrow on our day exploring the a-mazing city of Paris.

Au revoir

DAY 6 - London

We decided to give our cameras a rest today so very few pictures were taken.

We cleared out of Tony's and made our way, to the railway station. Meeting up with Nicola (Abby's physio pal) we enjoyed the sights of the Camden Markets after dropping our bags off at the Clink. The markets consumed our time for a good three hours then we found Marks and Spencer and analysed the packaging of the New Zealand produce.

Leaving London and looks like we are taking the good weather with us, temperature's have been in the high 20's while we have been here (whoop!), start our Topdeck tour tomorrow, so our two greatest dilema's in life - where to go and what to eat will basically be taken care of for the next 24 days - Holidaying is such hard work ;)

Hope everyone's well back in the land of milk and honey (NZ),

Happy Birthday Hamish!

xo

the pack

DAY 5 - London 23rd May

After arising a little earlier and getting sorted for the day we ventured out of the hotel to go and see the rich and famous. (Madame Tussauds). Swooning with George Clooney & smoozing Sherlock Holmes

Wisdom gained today:

Queue's run alot quicker when playing the alphabet game.

Brits enjoy queueing up and enjoy making others queue up.

We have made the decision to embrace this phenomena otherwise we could have become very depressed.

The rich and famous aren't that tall. ie. J-Lo and Tom Cruse

You can't see beyond urbanization from the London eye.

Church is sweet as anywhere, with other members of the whanau of God. (St Mary's Church)

There are some really compact cars in London.

All in all the trip so far has been great we have seen lots already and with a lot more time ahead of us we have potential to see a whole lot more. We have also realised that to people here NZers and Aussies must look similar as we have been asked countless times whether we are from Australia, much to our disgust.

DAY 4 - London 22nd May

London 22nd May

Gonna be quick and just nip through some of the highlights of our day before catching some sleep....

Well after getting off the plane, finding our accomodation, and then falling asleep before we could source out any tea we woke on the 22nd May... and it was a good start to the day with breakfast which was part of the accomodation

Breakfast is always a highlight.

The day out side looked to be shaping up well, so by lunchtime I really doubted the phrase "you certainly don't go to London for the weather" since we all got sunburnt... in May... yay!

So staying together as a pack we ventured out of the hotel and saw the sights of London, traveling mainly by bus and foot we went to Buckingham Palace, St Paul's Cathedral, trafalgar square, etc it was beaut

After a lot of checking out London, we're all starved by the end of the day and so quickly hunted down the closest decent feed of the classic english meal - fish and chips.

....

we found a fantastic chippy shop called Micky's Fish and Chips!

Their motto was fresh everyday... never frozen, so YAY for the english and their stupendous meals:)

This last picture is from the Balcony of our room.

Dinner on the balcony was lovely now we're all super tired, full, and happy.

Goodnight!

DAY 4 - Hong Kong to London

After an early start 4.45am we checked out of the Kimberley Hotel and made it to the Hong Kong airport. 13 hours later and a whole season of Glee (watched by Jess) we made it to London. Heathrow was a little different to Hong Kong, other than that everything was in English it was definitely not as clean.

We ventured to London Paddington via the Heathrow Connect (train) and reached Tony's Hotel. As the jet lag started to set in, it took us a little too much brain power to figure out if the guy at reception was serious or joking. We found out that Kath was better with keys than with jokes.

At this point the only sights of London we have seen is the hotel, as nice as it is we are looking forward to seeing significantly more of London over the next 4 days.

DAY 3 - HONG KONG

After a late night hunting for bargains in Mong Kok we had a relaxing morning checking out Kowloon park just down the road from our Hotel. Here there were heaps of birds - flamingoes, parrots, cockatoos and even an unfortunate looking Rhino-nose bird.

We've experienced the extremes of Hong Kong from the expansive malls with shops such as Versace, Gucci, Dolce & Gabana and many we had never even heard of! Although we felt slightly out of place as we had left our Jimmy Cho shoes at home that day the sweet, sweet air con was enough to leave our pride at the door. The other end of the spectrum was the markets tucked down alley ways with stalls selling goldfish in plastic bags and many, many knick knacks.

Another extreme we experienced was when we decided to take the MTR (train) back from Hong Kong Island to our Hotel, little did we know that thanks to Buddha's birthday on the Friday (a public holiday) everyone was heading out for the night... all 6 million of them, with the majority wanting to take the same train. Although at first we were a little overwhelmed thinking we'd never get home that night, the masses were very orderly and we soon found ourselves jammed into a train with just enough room for the doors to close (thanks to Whitey's TurboJam butt!)

Later we meet up again with Jenny to head down to see the light show from the ‘Walk with the stars’ boulevard – Hong Kong’s answer to Hollywood’s walk of fame. Unfortunately we missed the show but it was still very impressive looking over to Hong Kong Island at all the skyscrapers with different colours and patterns. But the best discovery was yet to come! Jenny took us to a nearby restaurant, which was packed to the rafters…literally! We had to wait to be seated but soon people were shuffled round and a table was made available. Talk about efficient service - orders were taken, cutlery thrown on the table not long followed by our meals; again we would have been quite lost without the wonderful Jenny! Dessert was the real winner though where we fell in love with Pineapple buns and Sweet milk buns.

Overall impressions Hong Kong...

1. Clean, alot of shop door handles were disinfected every two hours

2. HOT, humid, hot - air con is A-mazing

3. Very polite people (except for the ones on EVERY street corner trying to sell 'Missy' a copy watch or handbag)

4. Cheap meals, lots of fresh seafood (e.g. $7 for a meal)

5. It was uncommon to go for more than 100 steps without using an escalator. We heart escalators especially the big ones and the curved ones that make us go wow!

...was a lot of fun thanks to Jenny Gin!

DAY 1 - Auckland to Hong Kong

So long New Zealand and hellllooo Hong Kong…some of the members of the group handled the culture shock better than others! Thank goodness for Abby's friend Jenny in Hong Kong, she showed us around when we first got there and that made it so much easier.

Day 1 was a very long day. Once we arrived in Hong Kong the day was super packed with activities thanks to Jenny, I think we commuted on at least 5 different ways of transport on Day 1 – aeroplane, bus, MTR (train), tram, ferry and not to mention lots of walking. We enjoyed the heat outside and especially the air conditioning inside - flying in at 6.30am it was 27 degrees and increased as the day went on.

Lunch was a very unique experience of Dim Sim at City Hall Maxim Palace (all very posh). After being led to our table by an impeccably dressed lady in a HOT PINK suit! We were immediately swamped by women armed with trolleys filled with samples of Chinese food yelling at us in Cantonese. So to four Kiwis completely out of our league we relied heavily on Jenny, (the Lord always provides). It was the most chaotic, hilarious moment. Some of the food we tried included shrimp, p

(Jenny and Abby in the Palace)rawn dumplings, zebra striped sesame cake and Kath chased down the dessert trolley for some Mango soup.

After lunch we jumped on the bus and headed up to Victoria Peak to lookout over Hong Kong Island and the mainland. Hong Kong Island is the more western influenced part of Hong Kong.

Sightseeing done for the day we ventured to the Mong Kok markets where we "talked turkey" with the locals and got some super deals on electronic equipment.

(Kath working on her Horse riding fitness, she has now decided her inner thighs need to be stronger if she is to continue her dream to be an Olympic jockey. Thanks to Panasonic for their indoor horse fitness equipment this dream has potential to be reached.)

Apparently it is now my turn to write about our trip...all 4 hours of it! Kath's highlight (the Koru Lounge) has thankfully lived up to expectations and she is a very satisfied customer. We kind of feel like we have snuck in here and someone is going to catch us out, anyhow we are sitting here waiting for the flight to Hong Kong - the first of many airport waits I'm sure.

Don't worry I don't think this will be the norm that we all blog at the same time as there isn't alot to say when we haven't even left the country yet!

So I'll finish with a joke...

Two goldfish are in a tank...one says to the other "how do you drive this thing?!"

Jess :)

abby

Dito ladies, not much to add.

umm I did try and get caught through the metal detector with my button necklace.

Dunedin: no such luck, not even a flashing light.

Auckland: thought it would be beefed up security big city big risks!! Disappointed again so much so I stated " aww it didn't even beep" I looked suggestively at the youngish security guard (shall we call him Charlie) not even a smile from Hot Charlie!!! In fact he look decidedly suspiciously at me. I quickly backtracked holding my necklace out " I thought it would go off" Lucky Kath was there to back me up " yeah I thought with all that metal it would go off" I quickly left cute Charlie behind, pity.

Unfortunately or fortunately that is exciting as our trip has got, very uneventful and love that Koru lounge

The Start

WHITEY

Well we have now experienced the Koru Lounge, our start to the high life was made a whole lot easier to the help from the lovely Michelle. Although looking around the room it seems that the hunters have become the hunted, except for the lovely Jess who is savoring her last conversations to Mickey while still in New Zealand.

Flight number 1 has been completed and now we have 6 flights left. We are now all by ourselves and it is kinda scary. I think we have all had a bit of a panicky moment as this realisation has hit. Luckily we have each other and may the adventures begin...

Horrah Koru Lounge!

Kiaora, we are currently in the Auckland airport AirNZ Koru lounge! this has been the highlight of my trip thus far, I'm hoping there is one in Hong Kong:)

I had a small moment of missing my mum while flying out of Dunas, and followed quickly by the realization that we have to fend for ourselves and none of our mum's are hear to do the work for us. Sigh.

Well will keep posting as our trip continues.

Toodles

xoxo (mum)

Kath

P.S the others are well and happy, Jess is on the making the most of her last moments talking on her cell phone.