Posts with the category ‘Australia and New Zealand’


Airbnb For Rooms and a Whole Lot More

September 22, 2012

I can’t believe it was just one year ago that my internet-savvy daughter, Marian Schembari told me about Airbnb. I was visiting her in New Zealand headed to the United Arab Emirates  and – as is my wont – had not yet booked a hotel in Abu Dhabi.  “Why didn’t I check Airbnb?” she asked, and I had to confess, I’d never heard of it. Simply, Airbnb is a web-based marketplace for people to rent overnight accommodations to travelers. These can be as modest as a bed in a shared room or as grand as an entire house. In additional to these conventional places, people… Read More…


Quite a View from the Trolley

June 28, 2011

There’s a bright red cable car that runs up and down Victoria Mountain in Wellington New Zealand. Its so adorable, its easy to dismiss it as tourist kitsch. But this icon of the city has a history because this is the little train that could. It could create living space out of the sharp cliffs surrounding the narrow harbor front of New Zealand’s capital city by providing  easy and direct transport up the side of steep terrain.  It could feed the imagination of city planners who one hundred and fifty years ago set aside a large chunk of land for a botanical garden and footpath… Read More…


Kinda Like Being a Tramp

June 24, 2011

What Americans call hiking, the New Zealanders call tramping, which if you want to be silly and immature, (and I always do) it makes describing an afternoon of healthy activity giggle-inspiring because to be a “tramp” in the USA is kinda  naughty. Anyway, I had my first tramp yesterday when my daughter Marian‘s boyfriend, Sam James Jones-Parry and his cousin Ed Howard took me to the Te Henga Recreation Preserve northwest of Auckland. Sam actually has a connection to the Bethell of Bethell’s Beach above which we were tramping.  And listen, if I could claim it, I sure would, no matter how far up the… Read More…


Too Many Zones to Count

June 18, 2011

Read more about dancing with the locals in my June 2015 New York Times Travel story, here. Travel often requires getting out of one’s comfort zone but frankly that’s the destination I am hoping to find. My desire to be ensconced at a strange hostel or desert tent has resulted in some sleepless nights, sure, but its also exposed me to life-altering experiences. I’d have to call the Maori dance competition I attended here,  one of those not-to-be-forgotten events. From the moment I arrived in New Zealand and turned on the news channel run by the nation’s indigenous people and heard the news anchor talking in… Read More…


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