Our Christchurch Photo Is On Schmap.com

As an update to our last post, we recently learned that one of our photos of Christchurch (New Zealand) is included in the newly released sixth edition of Schmap Christchurch Guide. If you click on Punting on the Avon within the Top Attractions section of the Christchurch guide, you'll see our photo (credited with my name) amongst numerous others.

Punting on the Avon is akin to a gondola ride in Venice, Italy. There's a river that runs through the city and taking the gondola ride is one of the key attractions. We didn't participate in this activity when we were in Christchurch--opting to walk through the city and along the river instead--but apparently, the photo we posted to Flickr caught the editor's attention.

I still haven't checked out the site thoroughly, but it seems to have some cool iPhone applications as well as some in beta for Nokia cell phones. Too bad I have neither.

So, with this bit of travel news, I'm renewing my commitment to updating this blog more frequently.

Fun NZ photo news, honeymoon planning and more

In a fun bit of news, I received a note via my Flickr photo account that one of our photos of New Zealand has been short listed for inclusion in the sixth edition of the Schmap Christchurch Guide, to be published early February 2009. At first, I thought it was spam, but the site looks legit.

I've never heard of it before, but its home page urges visitors to "Explore your destination online with our unique integration of maps, photos and place reviews." If you're planning a trip, you might want to check out your destination there to see what insights you might get in addition to your usual favorites. I'll certainly let everyone know if our "punting on the Avon" shot makes the final cut for inclusion in the Christchurch guide.

As for our honeymoon, we haven't explored any further since my last post, but my former roomie (and bridesmaid) Andy sent me a thoughtful gift for Christmas (100 Best Romantic Resorts of the World). I can't wait to dive into the book for some more ideas. Perhaps the long weekend will give me time to do so.

Thinking About Our Honeymoon

Some day soon I'll get our wedding website up so everyone (who wants to) can keep track of the details as we finalize the plans, but we're very close to finalizing our date and location: Saturday, October 17, 2009 at The Foundry at Puritan Mill. Having spent the past 10 years focused on real estate PR, I'm a huge fan of adaptive reuse, so this is the perfect site for us. I could go on and on about why, but this post (on this travel-focused blog) is about our upcoming honeymoon.

Before we started thinking about our wedding, while we were still in New Zealand, we began contemplating how we wanted to spend our honeymoon. Our number one priority was that it be relaxing. When we take our annual international trip, we start out with the aim of alternating each year between adventurous/hectic and relaxing/rejuvenating locations. With a whirlwind tour of New Zealand under our belts this year, 2009 is definitely on target to be a relaxing destination. And, after tons of event planning details and decisions, I'll surely be ready to kick up with drink in hand and do nothing.

As we considered what would make our trip relaxing, a couple of criteria came to mind:

• A location we've been to before or at least in a country where we already understand customs, money, language, transportations and the other basics of every day life.


• As few destinations as possible to avoid packing and repacking bags and using train, plain and automobile to get around.

With that in mind, I'm currently considering three options:

• The U.S. West Coast--primarily San Francisco, Napa Valley and Sonoma with possible additions of Washington and Oregon. I'm sure many of you are surpised given my penchant for getting out of the country, but I love this area of California and really do need to explore more of my own country.

• Northern Italy--Lake Como (where we visited in 2007) with the possibility of hopping over to Austria, France or Monaco. As someone who hates to watch a TV show or movie twice or visit the same location more than once when there is so much else to see, the Lake Como region (and all of Italy) were so incredible that I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
• Bermuda--particularly 9 Beaches. They've got great over-the-water cabanas akin to Fiji without the long distance travel. However, we are getting married in hurricane season although I've convinced myself that Bermuda (more off the coast of North Carolina) doesn't get hit the way the Caribbean does.

So, those are just ideas that are currently floating around. I'll keep you posted regarding new thoughts as they arise. And, I still plan to post the top 5 things I'd do all over again in New Zealand and the top 5 things I might reconsider. Hopefully the Thanksgiving holiday will give me more free time to do so.

Photos Uploaded

I continue to have extreme issues in getting a slideshow of photos uploaded to our blog; however, for the moment I've at least got a very rough view of 35 of our photos going here until I can figure out whether the glitch is with Blogger, Flickr or user (i.e. me).

Most of you have seen a larger selection of photos via Kodak Gallery already, but I'm just trying to cover all my basis.

In the coming days, look for a list of the top 5 things we would absolutely do again as well as a list of 5 things we might have done differently knowing what we know now.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

In the Auckland airport...only 20

In the Auckland airport...only 20 hours until we are home. Fever's gone but head congestion makes flying fun. Who needs to hear?!?

Heading Home Soon

We're back in Queenstown and fly out tomorrow--arriving in Atlanta at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday...a long day of travel for sure.

We're exhausted. Hiking a glacier and "tramping" (i.e. hiking) around the country has worn us out. I don't think we know what a relaxing vacation is. [Note the photo to the right is not ours, but we had a similar experience. Just haven't uploaded our photos yet.]

We're staying at the Sofitel in Queenstown tonight though and are so glad that we picked a luxurious spot to rest before our day-long travels. It's certainly a beautiful country and we look forward to sharing a small selection of photos soon. We'll spare you the 3,000 or so we must have taken by now.