Thanks for visiting our website! If you’re interested in keeping up with us as we explore the world over the next two years, you’ve come to the right place.

We plan to visit less touristy cities and towns to experience the local culture, cuisine, and character. We want to explore the local museums, parks, and architecture. We want to visit places with natural scenic beauty or unique features. We plan to spend several days in each place, not rush from one place to the next on a tight schedule.

We’ll post pictures, and we’ll also share our impressions of each place and our experiences with longer, slower travel.

We invite you to subscribe to our newsletter (below). We’ll notify you of new content and keep you updated on our progress and plans. We’ll share more information in the newsletter than we’ll post publicly here.

Here’s a quick look at the places we visited in 2025:

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The Sights of Sydney

We concluded our seven-week trip to New Zealand and Australia with a five-night, four-day stay in Sydney. We toured the iconic Opera House, strolled through the Royal Botanic Garden, and visited three museums. One day, we took a tour to the Blue Mountains National Park and the Featherdale Wildlife Park, which we cover in this post.

In December, 2025, we visited Perth and Adelaide after taking a cruise from Hong Kong to Singapore. On this trip, we visited Hobart, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney to complete our tour of Australia’s six state capitals. All of these cities were interesting, enjoyable, and livable, with plenty of things to see and do. 

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Sydney’s Blue Mountains and Featherdale Wildlife Park

During our visit to Sydney, we took a day tour to the Blue Mountains National Park, which begins at the western edge of Sydney. It’s an expansive mountain range with surrounding canyons that are majestic and beautiful. Its vast scale invites comparisons to the Grand Canyon. While the Grand Canyon is larger and deeper, the Blue Mountains are similarly awe-inspiring.

Terpenoids emitted in large quantities by the abundant eucalyptus trees in the Blue Mountains are believed to cause the blue haze for which the mountains are named.

On the way to the Blue Mountains, we stopped at the Featherdale Wildlife Park. It’s unique among zoos in that it only houses animals that are native to Australia. And there are plenty of them! Featherdale was particularly enjoyable because visitors could get much closer to the animals and, in some cases, feed them. 

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Brisbane: Bursting with Art, Architecture, and Aesthetics

The next-to-last city on our New Zealand-Australia itinerary was Brisbane (“Bris-bn”). We had never been to Brisbane before, but there seemed to be plenty of things to see and do, so we budgeted five nights.

We’re glad we did. Brisbane is beautiful, with plenty of culture, parkland, and spectacular buildings. It’s a walkable, liveable city with an upbeat personality.

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Melbourne: Likeable, Livable, Cool, and Cultured

We spent four nights and three days in Melbourne (pronounced “Mel-bn” by the locals). We’ve been there once before for a two-day cruise stop in 2013, so we had already seen some of the sights. 

We didn’t recall that Melbourne had as many skyscrapers as it does now. Perhaps many have been built during the last 13 years. In any case, we loved the architecture and designs. This has been a common theme among the cities we visited in Australia and the larger cities in New Zealand. We took a lot of pictures of the interesting buildings, and have included some of them in a separate post.

The Southbank Promenade, along the Yarra River, is a focal point for city life and sightseeing.

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Tales from Tassie, where we met Bruny and Mona

The first city on the Australia portion of our trip was Hobart, the capital of Tasmania (“Tassie,” as the locals call it). It’s a smaller city, relative to Australia’s other state capitals, but it was beautiful, modern, and had a fun, comfortable vibe.

Our main activities in Tasmania were a Bruny Island tour and a visit to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA).

The bus from the airport dropped us off at the harbor.

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The Otherworldly Waitomo Glowworm Caves & the Beautiful Hamilton Gardens

Our final stop in New Zealand was Hamilton, the country’s fourth-largest city, located an hour and a half south of Auckland.

Our main reason for including Hamilton in our itinerary was to experience the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, which, along with Milford Sound, is truly a must-see attraction if you visit New Zealand. From Hamilton, the caves are just over an hour away, while tours originating from Auckland involve a two-and-a-half-hour drive.

We weren’t expecting much else from Hamilton, but we were wrong! Hamilton Gardens was absolutely worth visiting, and the Waikato Museum and Gallery was also worthwhile. We’ll cover all three in this post.

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Rotorua: Geothermal Wonders, Maori Culture, and Thrills

We spent three nights and two days in Rotorua, on New Zealand’s North Island. 

In some ways, it’s the North Island’s answer to Queenstown; an attractive town on a beautiful lake with outdoor thrill attractions and plenty for tourists to do. The surrounding mountains aren’t as high, but the views are still spectacular.

Queenstown bills itself as “The Adrenalin Capital of the World.” While Rotorua isn’t quite that, it also offers its share of thrill rides, plus tall redwood trees (imported from California as seedlings) and opportunities to experience Maori culture. And, it’s warmer. So it was a worthwhile stop.

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The Art Deco Charm of Napier, New Zealand

Napier is a city on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island. It’s the nexus of the largest wool center in the Southern Hemisphere, and the primary export seaport for northeastern New Zealand. It’s located in the center of the Hawke’s Bay region, which is the largest producer of apples, pears, and stone fruit in the country, as well as one of New Zealand’s primary wine regions.

But Napier’s most distinctive and charming characteristic is its Art Deco architecture. 

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Waves and Well Wishes from “Windy Wellington”

After covering a fair amount of New Zealand’s South Island, we flew from Christchurch to Wellington to explore the North Island.

Wellington, at the southern tip of the North Island, is officially the windiest city in the world, with an average wind speed of 27 miles per hour. The Cook Strait, which separates the North and South Islands, serves as a wind funnel for air blowing from the Tasman Sea to the Pacific Ocean. We felt it! 

But aside from that, Wellington is a lovely city, as you’ll see in the photos below. This is a view of the city from a vantage point at the top of the city’s famed cable car.

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Photos and Stories from Christchurch

We wrapped up our tour of New Zealand’s South Island with a brief stay in Christchurch.

Christchurch is probably best known, unfortunately, for the damage it suffered during earthquakes on September 4, 2010, and February 21, 2011, the latter of which killed 185 people. Adjusted for inflation, these earthquakes caused over $52.2 billion in damage, making them New Zealand’s costliest natural disaster and one of the most expensive disasters in history. 

We visited Christchurch for one day during our 2013 cruise from New Zealand to Australia. At the time, the destruction in the downtown area was still plainly visible. Some buildings had been demolished, while others stood abandoned. It was sad and a bit eerie.

Now, 15 years after those terrible earthquakes, we are happy to report that Christchurch has rebounded. The downtown is vibrant with attractive new buildings. The Christ Church Cathedral, which sustained massive damage, is still being rebuilt, but most other evidence of the earthquakes’ damage is gone.

During our stay, we visited the Christchurch Botanic Garden, the Christchurch Art Gallery, and the Arts Centre, all located within a couple blocks of each other.

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