A Fairly Fabulous Day

Hobbiton!!! We were so excited to visit Middle Earth and tour around The Shire.  The movie set is nestled in some hills; so you meet at a different spot with cafe, gift shop and parking lot.  They pick you up in a bus and then haul you to the actual set that is located on a working farm.  There are sheep all over the place.  In order to protect the set, there is a massive electric fence around the entire premise.   The original set was located via helicopter.  Peter Jackson loved the location because there was no evidence of the 21st century anywhere to be seen.  The set for the Lord of the Rings was temporary.  The agreement was that it be taken down when filming was finished.  However, when they had to rebuild the set for the Hobbit movies, the farmers would only let them use the farm again if they built the set to be permanent so they could make a tourist operation out of it.  Very clever farmers! There are over 40 ho...

New Zealand here we come!!!  We thought we had plenty of time to catch our flight from Sydney to Auckland, however we did not know how long the boarder control line would be.  We were barely passing through security 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to depart.  To say I was freaking out was an understatement.   It was the silent, staring straight in front of me kind of freaking out, where I knew I couldn't do anything but move through the line and then run like a bat out of hell to my gate.  When we cleared security, we took off!  Running, I'm pretty good at normally, running with a 20 pound backpack, eh, it starts to slow you down.  I was doing my best, and we could see the gate in front of us with, may I add, the staff totally making fun of us!  They were like, "slow down, we aren't going to leave you." Ha!  I guess there were a bunch of passengers stuck in the line so they delayed the flight so everyone could make it.  Hug...

After our stay in Sydney, we headed north up to Hunter Valley to stay with our friends, Ian and Janelle.  Ian and Porter work together as well.  They have an awesome boutique hotel, Tonic ,  right in the heart of Australia's wine country.  They live in a home on the hotel's property next to all the buildings that guests stay in.  It was gorgeous!  I didn't know what to even expect, but I had no idea that I about to spend a weekend in such a beautiful part of the world. Part of the guest rooms we stayed in.  Tonic has a very modern feel.  Its very spacious but still cozy and quaint with groovy furniture that is very eclectic and luxurious all at the same time. Their fantastic fireplace.  The view from our bed, what?!?! Pretty much the cutest puppy in Australia!  Ian and Janelle took us all over Hunter Valley to some fantastic vineyards.  We even stopped and had a yummy picnic lunch at one.  They know ...

T-minus 20 hours and counting... The longest plane ride of my life (thus far) had commenced.  Porter had a business conference in Sydney and I wanted to go to.  So we turned it into a 2 week adventure: week one was Australia, and week two was New Zealand.  We flew Qantas.  They were great, but their veggie meals were not.  I think was was served rice at all three meals with a variety of weird gravy and veggies on each dish.  We had a quick stop-over in Dubai.  It's sort of a layover.  Basically, they shoo everyone off, clean the plane, refuel, and switch crews while we all go shop for duty free items and Coconut Ritter Sports (Dubai and Zermatt are the only places I've found these little treasures).  Then we all got back on board for the long haul to Australia. This is us after 24+ hours of travel at 5 am in the Sydney airport, but hey at least we were still smiling!  We actually arrived early (4:15 am) but had to do circl...