A day in Wellington.

Today we are in Wellington,NZ. The morning started out cloudy (remember "the land of the long white cloud"), and now the sun is breaking through. We caught the shuttle into town and had a coffee at Gloria Jeans - this is the coffee house that is making it difficult for Starbucks to take over NZ and Austrailia. I must say that the coffee is better than Starbucks - less bitter - but still not as good as Woods :-)!

It is noon on Tuesday here, which makes it 3pm on Monday for you. We are going to walk around the city a bit, and then get another latte' and head back to the ship for some nappin' in the sun!

Amy - I've taken pictures of the hillsides - just imagine a horse riding across the ridge........


We'll have to get together for coffee and picture viewing when we get home. We bought you and Rob a chocolate bar at the Cadbury factory yesterday. It's called Energy, and Cadbury only sells it in New Zealand. It tends to be a more bitter dark chocolate rather than a milk chocolate. We thought you'd get a kick out of it!!

Tomorrow we spend the day cruising around a volcanic island that a french family owns. It's uninhabitible - they just own it because they can!! :-). So we'll basically have a day at sea. Then on Thursday we are in Taraunga, Friday in Auckland, and then some more sea days, so we will update the blog on Thur. or Fri.

Keep those comments coming, it's nice to be in touch with people at home, especially since it seems the password that I have set for my email is obviously not the one I thought it was and we can't access our email :-(!!

We love you all!!

The owner of the internet cafe just loaned us a device so we can download some pictures, so here they are - in no certain order at all....................

Our hike in the blue mountains.....

Our first beach in Austrailia, the afternoon we landed...........

More New Zealand countryside - can you say Lord of the rings, or Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?.......................

Guess where we are here - okay - it's the Sydney Opera house....................

Coffee in a streetside cafe' in Dunedin................

Our ship parked next the the Harbour Bridge (this is where you see the pictures of fireworks going off on New years eve.............the opera house is the the right of the picture..................

Yes, okay, I have a problem, but when these huge candy bars were only about $1.50 USD, I just had to get at least one of every kind.................Cadbury from New Zealand is so creamy..........remind me to give you all a sample....................:-) (Don't worry Emmy - mom has lots of chocolate just for you - maybe enough to get you through high school :-)


This is the wonderful family that we stayed with. We stayed with Sally (the mom) far left, and the Rene, John, Noah, and Elijah, drove us everywhere and were awesome hosts!! We now have friends for life in Austrailia!!

Love to you all - we'll post again soon!!