I guess most of us have used one or other of the travel aggregators to find a tour, or a hotel when planning a trip. I certainly have – Expedia, Booking.com, Trip Advisor. And I thought they were pretty good – until I learned about the problems associated with them. As you all know, I…
B and I went for a walk around the town of Akaroa, which is a typical holiday town catering for tourists – lots of eateries, souvenir shops, and tour operators. There’s a lot of French influence here, with many French street and business names, but it has a very normal history – a Frenchman bought…
B’s friend, S, picked us up from our Christchurch hotel and took us to her holiday home in Akaroa, about 90 minutes drive from the city. The Banks Peninsula is the result of volcanic activity. Both Lyttelton and Akaroa are the remains of volcanic craters. Read more here. It’s a very pretty drive from Christchurch,…
Today we went up into the mountains. We were blessed with brilliant weather – blue skies and not much cloud, and the snow that had fallen the previous week had persisted. Transport was a little white van capable of seating 12. There were 11 adults and a child – 4 Americans, 2 other Australians and…
After a leisurely breakfast at the same cafe as yesterday we went to the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, a large park with the Avon River running through it. It’s Autumn in Christchurch and in this cooler climate the deciduous trees are a riot of colour. We also went into an exhibition of whimsical dance costumes, all…
Sunday morning dawned blustery, with scudding clouds interspersed with sunshine. My friend and I found Procope, a lovely little coffee shop, open on a Sunday morning for a welcome coffee and an excellent bite to eat, then we walked into Christchurch’s CBD. Every street had empty blocks, traffic cones, detours, wire fencing, cranes, and construction…
I was off on my own (ie without Pete) for a short adventure with my oldest friend, B. She and I go back fifty years, when we first met at high school. We became firm friends at university and shared many a scrape and mistake and wonderful times back in Perth, where I grew up….
It’s been quite the saga with our local possums lately. For my non-Australian readers, possums are native Australian marsupials about the size of a cat. They are mainly vegetarian, eating leaves, fruit, flowers and grass. But they’re not averse to insects and bird’s eggs, and have become opportunistic foragers in towns. They’re nocturnal and sleep…
Fair Play Two matters have struck a chord with me this week. The first is the cricket. The vice-captain of the Australian cricket team coached a bowler to roughen one side of the ball using sand paper, and the captain condoned it. It’s called ball-tampering and has happened in cricket over the years. This article…
I suppose the biggest news of the week has been that Cambridge Analytica has sold the data of fifty million or so Facebook users. Am I shocked? Not really. Do I think it was a good thing to do? Not at all. Am I surprised? You guessed it. I was reluctant to join Facebook at…