We arrived into Heathrow, an interesting place with a 2 hour wait at immigration before heading onward to Gatwick for a night of much needed rest. From Gatwick we caught an Easyjet flight to Venice. Our Airbnb host in Mestre provided us with a few tips around visiting the island and we headed off to explore. Essentially he told us to “get lost” in the alleys and check out the least busy bridges...great advice! Our first evening we strolled through the old V...

A bit of a longer visit this time around gave us the opportunity to see all 4 seasons Ottawa has to offer! Our time at home was family and friends filled. We arrived in time to surprise April for her 40th birthday, spend Easter with family and friends...Easter egg hunts and all...as well as catching up with friends. The time has flown once again and we are heading off to Europe for our final leg of “chasing the weather”. We will do our best to keep the blo...

We finished our New Zealand trip making our way back up the west coast of the North Island.  We explored the coast line once again as well as Mt. Taranaki, on a bit of an overcast day. We crossed paths with a High School group on a hiking trip for 3 days and while they looked a bit beaten down I took the opportunity to remind them to soak it in...they are very lucky. Our final stop before arriving back in Auckland was Raglan, an “artsy/bohemian” town as t...

Our final stop on the South Island was Kaikoura. From Franz Josef we had a brief stop in Reefton, a small town on the Lewis pass known for its mining history. Then onward to Kaikoura, a small tourist town just north of Christchurch, that made international news in 2016 after a 7.8 earthquake. The town continues to rebuild and the road between Kaikoura and Picton only recently opened. Kaikoura is well known for its marine life. Sperm whales and dusky dolphins...

Our drive up to Franz Josef was a bit of a mixed bag of weather. Leaving Wanaka we had beautiful sunshine and as we headed over the pass we started into heavy rain. We geared up for a short walk to the Blue Pools, along the scenic highway, to find that they were now green due to all the rain. As we continued on to Haast and through to Franz Josef we continued to be met by rain and low lying cloud. We had a tour of the glacier booked but it was cancelled to du...