Arrival in New Zealand

We flew to Auckland overnight, arriving at 6 a.m. local time. We flew on Air New Zealand from Honolulu. Air New Zealand served us 2 delicious and wholesome meals on our 8 1/2 hour flight. United served only wraps and sandwiches, which were subpar in my opinion, and if you wanted these food items you had to pay additionally for them. Oh, they only take credit cards for these food purchases. They do still provide water, soda, coffee or tea free of charge, really gereous of them, eh? As I said to Chuck on the flight into Auckland, if Air New Zealand can treat its customers this well and still make a profit, why can't United?

Air new Zealand served a dinner meal of Chicken Frittata, a delicious salad, broccolli and a very nice cake and pudding desert. In addition, the flight attendants went up and down the aisles offering red or white wine a no extra charge. The breakfast was an omelet, grilled tomoato and very nice fruit salad, along with a glass of juice, which they refilled on request and coffee or tea. Later a muffin was also served. Prior to departure they also offered pieces of hard candy.

Air New Zealand's aircraft was a much new plane with a number of movie, tv, documenary, travel and public intrest videos available individually to each passenger, free of charge. United's video was "what you see is what you get".

Needless to say, Air New Zealand wins the "Doebler favorite airline" award!

We arrived in New Zealand and breezed through customs. We picked up our rental car (A Ford Falcon) and then the real adventure began - driving on the other side of the brain! It has to be called that because it is not just a matter of pointing your vehicle down the opposite side of the street. It seems that EVERYTHING to do with driving is opposite. The steering wheel in the car, the shifter for transmission gear selection, the turn signals are opposite where they are on cars in the U.S.! I have driven cars on traffic circles, but the circles here go the other way! I turned the windshield wipers on countless times, because I actually wanted to turn on the turn signals, and the wipers are where the turn signals should be in my mind. You are required to think in totally different, unfamiliar ways when you are driving here.

Chuck and I had about an hour before Lindsay was due in by plane from Wellington, so we drove around Auckland a bit to practice the driving thing. Chuck did the navigation, I drove. It is obviously a problem when people come here and are not familiar with the left side of the road driving. There is actually a lighted little dummy light on the dashboard that says 'Keep left" with an arrow. We thought this was funny, until we started driving. We hope to master this skill by the time we leave the country, but we also got full insurance coverage! We viewed that insurance as a neccessity. Of course everything is also in kilometers, which takes a bit of converting, so this is really challenging our brains in so many ways!

Finally Lindsay arrived from Welling, we had such a nice reunion, and then off we went driving helter-skelter again. It was wonderful to all be back together, laughing and joking and yelling (as the Doebler clan is abt to do when they are driving on the wrong side of the road)! What a great time! We drove to downtown Auckland and parked with no incidents!

We walked around until we found a nice little cafe to enjoy a nice breakfast together. It was a wonderful breakfast (I had the Turkish breakfast, which was foccacia, jam, buter, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes and a poched egg).

After our meal we walked a few block to a small shopping area and browsed around some of the stores. Lindsay took us into a local store similar to a Target or Walmart. It was fascinating to see a majority of the products there were unfamiliar. Chips, soda and juice drinks, baked good, canned goods...all totally different flavors or items unfamiliar to us. When we visit China, I expectd such differences, but I think I expeced an English speaking country to feel a bit more familiar than this does.

We left the shopping district and walked down to the wharf. Auckland is a city on a bay and has beautiful boating and beach areas. Along the wharves there are large red light posts with the head of Posideon as far as the eye can see. They look very dramatic as you stroll along the waterfront area. The area generally reminds me of a very modern Boston waterfront area. We are going to eat at one of the many waterfront restaurants there on the wharf this evening.

Finally we walked away from the waterfront area and we went to Auckland's version of the Seattle SpaceNeedle. They call theirs the "Sky Tower". They have trips up to the top and you can be strapped into a harness system and they take you outside on the metal decking. It looked really exciting, but Chuck and Lindsay said, "no"., so we just watched as they suited up another group to go up.

Now we are at our hotel, a block from the Sky Tower. Our room overlooks the Sky Tower and Bungie Jump Ride a block away also. Apparently New Zealanders like to Bungie Jump alot and there are many places you can do this. I know many friends believe I am crazy, but frankly, I would never do a bungie jump, okay?

Honolulu, no Diamond Head!

Well, due some unfortunate circumstances, we did not make it to Diamond Head. We did see it from a distance. Instead, we had a long, city bus ride through the city when Chuck decided that we could save some money by taking the city transportation system to Diamond Head.

We had a lovely bus ride through Honolulu. I thihnk we saw about every street. It took 1 1/2 hrs. to get to the city transfer station, and then we had to pick up another bus. We waited 30 minutes for our transfer bus, then did the math and decided we did not have time to get to Diamond Head, do the 2 hour hike and get then back in time to comfortably catch our flight.

Instead we strolled around an open air market, took a taxi back to the airport, and here we are.

The picture is of a Nanu tree, which is nearly extinct. It is a type of Gardenia typw tree. The flowers are beautiful. I don't know if they are fragrant, didn't get close enough.





We caught a taxi back to the airport and we saw neighborhood after neighborhood filled with houses, a vast majorit of which has solar pannels on their roof. Looks like they are serious here about renewable resources.



Needless to say, as we sit here awaiting our flight,we are exhausted. I only got 3 hrs. sleep the night before we left and it is now 12:30 a.m. Chicago time. Hopefully we will be able to sleep on the plan, since we arrive ta 6 a.m.

We're off again...

This time to New Zealand. Travel along and let's see what we find (or trip over!)...

The most exciting part will be that I will get to see Lindsay!

We will be staying on the North Island for this trip, and it's suppose to be a relaxing trip, ha ha ha!

Although we leave Chicago under the threat of icy rain and possible light snow (hey, it's November), we will arrive to summer in New Zealand.

What that means is I am wearing shorts to the airport...

Our first stop will be Honolulu where we hope to hike Diamondhead and get some photos with our little point and click, let's see how they turn out.

The hike up is only .7 miles, so we should be able to manage, although after living in the midwest, I'm not use to inclines anymore...

History and more culinary delights in Boston!

One of the best things about Boston (besides the food), is the history that is so accessible. There are tourists everywhere, tours abound for any and every historical site, and self guided walks through the history of the beginning of our nation. Since we all love history, especially revolutionary era history, we LOVE this city.


We walked through the unique cemetaries. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few...

A few interesting tidbits about these gravestones-

• They are mostly puritanical gravestones, all the images are highly symbolic, although there are some early american catholic gravestones here also.
• The skull with wings on many of the gravestones symbolizes the soul leaving the body.
• On many of the gravestones a skeleton, sometimes dancing, can be seen. The skeleton symbolizes death Many times you see this figure extinguishing a candle, showing a snuffing out of life. Often this image is accompanied by another robed figure seeking to stop the skeleton from putting out the candle, this figure often has an hourglass. This robed figure symbolizes time.
• At the Granary Cemetary is the largest grave oblisk in Boston with the name Franklin engraved on each side. We wondered about this, since we know Benjamin Franklin is buried in Philadelphia. Here are the graves of Ben's parent's.
• On many stones, the stone carver would run out of room on a line when carving a word. No problem, they would insert the letters that they had not had room for above the line. No need to waste a good gravestonestone!
• On may gravestones they have 2 consecutive years for a birth year. This does not mean they were unaware of the year of birth, but rather at the time, some places still went by the Juian calendar, which set the beginning of the new year in March, while others adhered to the Grecian calendar, setting the new year start at January 1. Thus, if someone was born in the early part of the year, they placed both years on the gravestone, since it depended on what year you observed, as to what year you may believe the person was born. In 1752, Britain and all it's colonies formally adopted the Grecian calendar, which set the new year start permenantly at January 1st. After that year, there was no longer a question as to birth year.

So, we finished up our walk through the cemetaries and Boston Commons and came back to relax and read for awhile. Soon it is off to dinner in the Italian quarter and some evening strolling along the wharf!

1st Day Boston

We have arrived and spent the whole day in sunny beautiful Boston. We left Chicago cold and snowy, and arrived in Boston where the sun was shinning and the crowds were plentiful. We are staying at Club Quaters hotel in the downtown historic district right along the freedom trail. We checked in and found the hotel to be very nice and comfortable. The staff is quite friendly and helpful also. We walked over to the Green Dragon for lunch-

Clam Chowder, Fish and Chip, pints of beer, yum yum!! It was as good as we remembered.

We walked over to the open farmers market, where they sell fresh fish, vegetables, baked goods, etc., right on the street. It was unbelieveably crowded, and the prices were shockingly low!

After strolling through the open farmers market, we walked over to Feneuil Hall. We picked up a hat and gloves (I forgot mine at home), and they we walked over to the Book Store. After lspent browsing the selections, we returned to the hotel.

Naps were a welcome break after having gotten up at 5 a.m. to catch the flight from O'Hare to Boston. We requested guest services at Club Quarters to make reservations for us at Union Oyster House for dinner. We walked over to the restaurant at 8:15 and we were extremely surprised to see so many people on the streets and at many of the restaurants throughout the historic district. We were glad for the reservations when we arrived at the Union Oyster House, the wait for those without reservations was 90+ minutes. Even we waited 20 minutes, and we had reservations. We ate dinner (Swordfish, clam chowder, lobster raviolis, raw oysters, scrod, it was all great!) -

and have now returned to the hotel. We are now relaxing and have decided to sleep to as late as we want tomorrow. What a treat! We never do that, especially on a trip. Tomorrow, more history and beauty of Boston!

Leaving for Boston

We'll be traveling to Boston next weekend (Feb 16-19). Chuck has another business trip, Lindsay and I have a long weekend due to President's Day (gotta love those presidents!), so off we go... We'll post pictures and commentary. Hopefully the weather will cooperate or there will be lots of hotel room pix!

We're back!

We arrived back in St. Charles at around 2 p.m. today (Sunday). We drove from Madrid to Barcelona on Saturday. The landscape of the Spanish countryside really varies greatly. In many areas there are cactus and the landscape resembles the American west. In other areas there are groves of olive trees and grape vineyards. Everywhere there are castle remains dotting the landscape.

We have seen large fields of wind farms in Spain also. We saw a very large one in southern Spain between Tarifa and our trip to Lisbon. The one below was probably as large. The highway goes right amongst the wind turbines. There are a couple hundred of these turbines in each of the numerous wind farms we passed. We also passed a number of large areas with solar panel power grids.

Also on our trip between Madrid and Barcelona was the Greenwich Meridian. It is well marked with signs and then a huge archway.

Finally, some interesting things we were unaware of before we visited this region-

• Car keys are different, at least the one we had (for our rental) and some other people's that we observed also. Our key was a flat piece of metal with a deeply grooved area in the center. The "head" of the key was the auto-locking and unlocking mechanism. We also saw some keys that were plastic computer chips, not traditional keys, as we know them.

• Drinking is much more accepted in this region of the world than in the U.S. It was typical to see people with port wine or other alcoholic drinks before noon. People also had wine and drinks at lunch, and dinner. Many places, we were the lone diners without alcohol on the table. Drinking age is 16.


• Breakfast is not a full meal, except in Gibraltar. In most areas we visited, people had sweet rolls and "coffee" (espresso) for breakfast.


• The EU has passed new no smoking laws recently, but many of the new laws are just starting to be enforced. Smoking is much more common in the areas we visited.


• In Gibraltar and Morocco meals are eaten at much the same times as we do in the U.S., but in all the other places we visited, breakfast is a small roll at mid-morning, lunch is a baguette (usually cheese or ham) and a glass of wine sometime between 2 and 4 p.m., and dinner is a large meal not earlier than 8 p.m.


• When we spoke with people from different areas, and we told them we were from the U.S., everyone expressed interest and told us that very few people from our country travel to Europe. We were surprised by this assertion, because most people we know have traveled to Europe. We observed no evidence of negativity towards Americans. In fact, people seemed overwhelmingly friendly and interested in talking with us.


• Salad is served with most meals ordered at the evening meal, which means a few leaves of lettuce, a slice or two of tomato, accompanied by vinegar and olive oil.


• Eggs and/or omelettes are eaten in Spain and Portugal (at least in the areas we visited) for the dinner meal, not breakfast.


• Germany's security is TOUGH! Both going into and leaving through Frankfurt airport we were pulled aside, although we had easily passed through security in other areas (O'Hare and Barcelona). Lindsay was pulled aside and had to empty a carry-on bag she was carrying, she had an IPod taken and tested for trace amounts of plastic explosives on our return trip (this happened to me with my computer on the way through Frankfurt to Barcelona).


• We have all heard the stories of people in France being less than friendly, we found no evidence of this whatsoever. We enjoyed France thoroughly and plan on returning.


• Road signs in the cities were terrible. In the countryside, they were quite a bit better. Some regions had English signs, others did not.


• Tolls for the toll roads are unbelievable high! Some tolls were 20+ Euros for a 50 mile stretch of highway. We found not service stations with gas pumps that you could swipe your credit card to pay, you had to go inside the station and pay.


• When you order water, you always get bottled water. If you order coffee, you get espresso-one cup, no free refills.


• Meals are slow and deliberate. Dinner is a minimum of 2 hours, no matter how you try to hurry the servers along, so be patient and enjoy the food.

Well, that's or trip. We had a great time, hope you enjoyed and learned things along with us!!

The Doeblers