Take a hat

Looking North - Northland Tour. Walking up to St Pauls, Whangaroa We left the Fantail Inn and the lovely town of Russell behind us and sailed back over the Opua Ferry to the holiday resort of Pahia. We visited 12 years ago and it seemed little changed. We didn't stop and pushed on North, taking a detour through Kerikeri for a look see. It’s the go-to shopping destination if you live in Russell and seemed quite busy. The area is famous for its fruit and we saw loads of orchards as we passed through. We had a lunch stop at Jesse's on the Waterfront in Mangonui. A nice busy Kiwi Cafe.  It was just a short distance to Coopers Beach and our new home The San Marino. It was a bit tired but the location, right on the fabulous beach, was perfect. We settled on the second room we were shown and headed out on a walk, the first of many over the next five days on this beautiful stretch of sand. Coopers Beach It was backed by   Pohutukawa trees that gave excellent shade. They looked like g...

Getting Down Under and Heading North Leaving Home in the darkness with rain falling was not the greatest start to our expedition. Things got much worse when we hit the stationary traffic on the M3. Luckily we had left home nice and early so we were not too stressed. The plan was for me to drop TW at Terminal 3 and then take the shuttle from the car depot. There was no time for that. Check-in at Virgin was easy and friendly. We headed for the Virgin Lounge and a very decent veggie breakfast. A comfortable flight followed on a Virgin A350. We landed at LAX on time and immigration went surprisingly smoothly, apart from my confusion when trying too get my paws onto the fingerprint scanner in the correct order. The next challenge, how to get to Santa Monica? We wanted to go via an Uber Taxi but we had no Internet access in the Terminal. Regardless, we took the Green Shuttle to the pick up point where we managed to logon and order up a taxi. It arrived in a couple of minutes. Great service a...