Conversations With A Poet

New Zealand is awesome! Green and lush and populated with lots of friendly people.   We started our nine-day New Zealand trip in Queenstown. While there, we took the Skyline cable car to the top of a mountain and had a wonderful view of the city. The next day we went to Milford Sound, which we highly recommend. At first, we were rather turned off by the fact that it would be a 4 1/2 hour coach ride to get there, but the journey turned out to be almost as magnificent as the destination itself. The driver stopped three or four times for a coffee break and picture taking. The countryside along the way was spectacular. When we arrived at Milford Sound, we boarded a cruise ship for a 2- hour tour through snow-capped mountains and waterfalls. The Hilton Hotel we stayed at was on the beautiful Wakatipu lake and had a very nice bar at the top of the hotel. We could sit outside and enjoy the scenery and since it was a perfect 70 something degrees, Denny and George never had to mi

It was nice to be met at the airport in Melbourne by Denny’s friend Bob Maluga. Denny met Bob a few years back while in Thailand. Bob lives in Melbourne and hosted us for a night in his lovely, cozy cottage with the most beautiful garden back yard. He then showed us around for the next three days.  One of the first stops after settling in was “Two Birds” Brewery. “Two Birds” is owned by two young women who in 2011 decided to brew their own beer and open their own pub.  We enjoyed a couple beers there and then Ollie, another Aussie friend of Denny and Bob’s joined us. It’s been a wonderful reunion for the three of them and we’ve had an insiders look at Melbourne.  We spent the next couple of days walking along the water and eating at some of the local restaurants that Bob likes. One night we had dumplings and another we had pizza with mashed potatoes and prawns.  Actually we had lots of food we don’t eat regularly at home.  We went into town and walked through the Vic

If it’s not one thing it’s another. We landed on the Gold Coast to cloudy, blue skies and lots of wind. After collecting our luggage and calling Uber, we were on our way to the beautiful Hilton Hotel on Surfer's Paradise.   When we were checking in, Denny realized he didn’t have his computer case that had his passport and credit cards in it. Yep! We panicked. We called the Uber driver and it wasn’t in the car, so we called the airport and reported that if it was there we had no idea where we may have left it. They got the security people on it immediately and to our amazement maybe 45 minutes later we got a phone call saying they had it.  Nehemiah, our Uber driver called about that time to see if we found it and offered to go back to the airport and pick it up and bring it to us. We paid him handsomely and also took him to dinner with us. I mean really, when was the last time you became good friends with your Uber driver? Nehemiah is Maori (the Maori are the indigenous P

On our second day in Sydney our main focus was finding a place to make a bet on the Melbourne Cup. The Melbourne Cup is Australia’s best- known sporting event. It’s known as “the race that stops the nation." It is actually an annual public holiday in the state of Victoria. We had a recommendation to go to “The Sheaf,” a pub, a very big pub with lots of rooms, inside and out. There were rooms you ate in, and other rooms that you could smoke in, so when our food was ready, we took it outside to eat and then came back in so the men could smoke their cigars. It was packed with people of all ages, A lot were dressed like we see in the states at the Kentucky Derby, gorgeous dresses and beautiful hats, men were in suits. The food was delicious, fish and chips, the beer and wine was flowing and we had many great conversations with the very friendly Australians. All four of us had bets on different horses and one of us made a little bit on a horse that just squeaked in at the end.