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After waving goodbye to Karyo’s mum we still had a week left in Athens before it was time to wave goodbye to Greece and say Hello to New Zealand.

As we had already visited quite a few of the usual touristy hotspots in Athens whilst his mum was with us we decided, that for our final week in Athens, we would relax and get out of the city to spend some time on the beach.

We also had promised to meet up with an Athenian friend so that was also high on our ‘must-do’ list before we left Athens.

Before I go on, my apologies for once again being so late with this month’s update. The time goes so quickly and I am very lazy are my very lame excuses. I’ll try to do better next year – honestly!

So, without further ado, here is our November update. Hopefully, December will be hot on its heels but please don’t hold your breath.

Voula Beach

When visiting Athens for anything more than a weekend it is always a good idea to make time to leave the chaos and pollution of the city at some point to visit a beach.

There are many beach areas to choose from that are very easy to access from Athens city centre. On this occasion, we chose to visit Voula.

Getting to Voula is from Athens easy. The tram goes from Syntagma square in the city centre directly to Voula for €2.30 each way. Tickets can be bought at the automatic ticket machines at the tram stop. Don’t forget to scan your ticket to validate it as you board the tram as inspectors do jump on and off trams throughout the day and night randomly checking tickets.

Voula beach, similarly to a few others along the coast is privately managed which means that there is a small fee to access it. Once on the beach though, there are decent facilities. These include a few shops, a restaurant, a bar, and a good, clean shower & toilet area. Plus, for an additional fee umbrellas and sunbeds are available for those too posh to lie on the beach.

As it was so late in the season when we visited, the shops were closed ( we never use them anyway), the beach was very quiet (a bonus as we much prefer a quiet beach) – and the entrance was free! (Result!)

The water here is crystal clear and very shallow until you walk in for quite a distance so very safe for non-swimmers or families.

Considering it was November, we had no complaints about the weather. The sun was shining and the sea was warm. In fact, we had such a good time that we decided to go again the following day. You can never have too much of a good thing!

Nafplio

When we were last in Athens back in 2020 we met an Athenian local, Demetris. We kept in touch when we left and promised to meet up again during this visit.

True to our word we met Demetris and asked him for any recommendations of places for us to visit. He kindly offered to take us to see somewhere that neither of us had been before. The city of Nafplio.

Nafplio is a two-hour drive from Athens but well worth the effort. The city has a really beautiful historic centre which is full of windy streets and old houses, shops, bars, and religious buildings.

Interestingly, Nafplio was the first capital city of Modern Greece. That changed in 1833 when Athens became the new capital. It seems to be a very popular city as a place to visit for Greeks yet is still relatively undiscovered by international tourists.

I read that there are 999 steps that take you to the top of the ruins of the Palamidi Fortress which stands high on a mountain above Nafplio. I didn’t count so can not confirm the number but I can confirm that there are a lot! Be sure to wear a hat, suncream and those all-important sensible shoes before attempting the ascent.

We had been told that Nafplio is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful (and romantic) cities in Greece. Having seen the city with our own eyes we definitely agree.

It is a tragedy that this beautiful city is largely overlooked by tourists. Having said that, maybe this is exactly the reason that makes a visit here so special. As Arnie almost said – “We’ll be back!”

Preparing for New Zealand

Our visit to Athens soon came to an end and before we knew it, it was time to jet off on our trip to New Zealand.

We had first thought about this trip when Karyo decided to take a year off work. At the time there seemed to be so much preparation to do. We were not overly concerned though as we had plenty of time to do all the arrangements.

That was way back in June.

Now is November and just a few days before we were due to leave we still hadn’t done all the arrangements needed. Panic was starting to set in. We really do need to brush up on our organisational skills! I will add that to our long list of New Year resolutions, along with getting these blog posts out on time.

The biggest decision we had to make was what was the actual route we wanted to take to get there. Should we stop halfway to take a rest somewhere for a few days or should we just bite the bullet and get there in one journey?

Karyo, who hates long flights wanted the stop-over option whilst I preferred the grit your teeth and get there in one journey option.

After many, many discussions and changes of mind, Karyo eventually came around to my way of thinking. ( I know, I was surprised too!).

On that very day, mainly so that he would not change his mind, we took the bull by the horns and booked our flight tickets.

Athens – Vienna – Seoul – Auckland.

Three flights, with short transfer times in between, meant that we had a 31-hour journey to look forward to.

We were to leave Athens at 4.20 pm on Friday the 11th of November and would arrive in Auckland at 9.30 am on Sunday the 13th of November. Karyo grimaced when I showed him our schedule but we were now well and truly committed. We’d bought the tickets. It was definitely happening. How exciting!

Next, with the clock ticking, we had another problem to solve. A criterion needed to enter New Zealand is that you must already have a flight ticket booked to leave the country at the end of your trip.

For most holiday travellers, this is an easy request to adhere to. Just book a return ticket. However, for us, it was not so easy. For two main reasons –

• 1 – We didn’t know how long we wanted to stay in New Zealand
• 2 – We still had no idea where we wanted to go after New Zealand.

So here we were, a day before we were due to depart and still had no ticket out of New Zealand booked. We had to make a decision – fast!

I had been told about a company that may be the solution to our problem, onwardticket.com. Basically, for a small fee, this company will reserve you an airline ticket anywhere in the world. The ticket is valid for 48 hours. After that time, they cancel the reservation on your behalf.

So, if we booked an onward ticket with this company we would then have a valid onward ticket to show immigration without actually having to commit to an onward journey before we even arrive.

I know it all sounds a bit dodgy but I have been reliably told (admittedly, by some bloke on Facebook) that this is a legal loophole that is often used by nomadic travellers.

I did more research and yes, it did look legal and above board. Yet somehow we were still nervous.

What if immigration did not accept this type of ticket? Would they put us on the first flight home? Would our passports get black-marked? Would we end up in clink? Was it a risk we were prepared to take?

We tried our best to talk ourselves into it. It really did seem to be the ideal solution. However, not wanting to end up as some hardened Kiwi criminals plaything, in the end, we bottled it and went for Plan B.

We needed to sit down and decide how long we wanted to spend in New Zealand and where we wanted to go afterwards. Then we needed to get those tickets booked pronto, time was running out!

With just twelve hours left before we set off on our New Zealand adventure, we plumped for a random date in February and booked flight tickets to Melbourne, Australia.

Why did we pick Melbourne?

Honestly, we have no idea. We had no time left to give it much consideration and having never been to Australia before, geographically, it seemed to be a logical choice of country to visit next.

Whilst we are in Australia we thought that we would most likely want to visit two or three big cities. Melbourne is a big city. In Australia. It all seemed to make sense.

If this sounds as if we are winging it and making it up as we go along. That is probably because we are. Over the last two years, we have become so used to travelling on one-way tickets that having to think about a return ticket turned out to be a much bigger decision than it really should have.

Anyway, having now secured our flight ticket to leave New Zealand. We can now concentrate on our arrival into New Zealand.

The Journey

To our surprise, the journey was nowhere near as bad as we were expecting.

We checked in at Athens and were told that the next time we would see our luggage would be when we arrived in Auckland. It was very important though, said the lady at check-in in Athens, that we needed to check-in ourselves again in Vienna.

This was because our Athens-Vienna flight was operated by Agean airways but the rest of the journey was operated by Korean Air. Once we had checked ourselves in at Vienna, the rest of the journey would be plain sailing (or flying) promised the lady at check-in in Athens.

Remarkably, considering our past long list of travel disasters, she was correct!

It started well and the Athens-Vienna flight was bang on time. This had been a concern as, from Vienna, we only had just less than two hours before our Vienna-Seoul flight was due to take off.

This might sound like plenty of time but, to be honest, was probably the most stressful point of the journey.

It took us twenty minutes to get off the plane which obviously took us to the arrivals lounge. From there, we had to find the departure lounge and Korean Air check-in desk. The signage at Vienna was poor and English speakers were harder to find than hens teeth.

Before we knew where we were, we found ourselves running around aimlessly reminiscent of a scene from challenge Anneka. (The best thing on the telly in the ’90s in my humble opinion)

Eventually, after running past Starbucks for the fifth time, a passing cleaner turned out to be our hero without a cape. Using his very broken English and the pointy end of his mop he gave us a new direction to go. That direction was up. Which immediately made more sense than the circular route we had been taking for the last ten minutes.

On arrival at the check-in, we were dreading being at the back of a long queue but no, it was completely empty. We breezed through, passed through security with no issues and arrived at the boarding gate with time to spare. Anika would have been proud of us!

From there on, Korean Air was fantastic. Having only flown with budget airlines for the past thirty years this was a totally different experience for us. The seats were comfortable, the food served was very nice, the service was really professional and the individual entertainment screens had a great selection of films and TV shows to pass the time.

Granted, six solid hours of Britains got talent may not be everyone’s cup of tea but beggars can’t be choosers. What better way to spend six hours could there possibly be than in the company of probably some of the worst talent that Britain has to offer?

Thirty-one hours from our Athens departure, our Seoul to Auckland flight eventually landed. Once again, bang on time.

We had arrived. Tired? Yes. Exhausted? To our surprise nowhere near as much as we had expected we would be.

Auckland

To start our trip we had booked an Airbnb in Auckland.

This proved to be one of our better ideas.

It was quick and very easy to get to the Airbnb from the airport. We were able to catch up on our sleep, have a chance to get used to the Greece/New Zealand eleven-hour time difference and get to see some of the city of Auckland before setting off to the first of four house-sits that we had booked in New Zealand.

Auckland is a vibrant city based around two harbours. The City Sky Tower dominates the skyline. You can go to the top for great views. To get down again you can take the lift or, for those much braver than us – you can choose to bungee jump!

The marina is a tourist hotspot and a great place to sit at one of the many cafes to sit and enjoy the sunshine whilst wondering who could possibly own the massive superyachts floating in the water.

Our Airbnb

The Airbnb we had booked was in a suburb of Auckland named ‘Newmarket’. It was a great location, really easy to get to from the Airport and just two stops on the train to the main city centre.

Jet lag had set in and, for a few days, our sleep pattern was all over the place. However the location, quiet and serenity of the Airbnb made it a perfect place to get our body clock back into sync.

The area of Newmarket is really hilly and from street level, all houses look quite normal. However, each house had three letter boxes outside which was a clue to the unusual positioning of the housing on the street.

The house visible at street level was actually the top of the hill but below this, were two more houses built down into the hill. Surrounding each development of three houses were trees and really lush vegetation.

Our Airbnb was the bottom house of the three, set low into the hill. Far away from the road and all the noise that can come with that. Looking out of any window all that you could see were trees. It gave you the feeling that you were living in a tree house in a rainforest – absolutely lovely. A definite 10/10 for location. Add to this the fact that the apartment was really well equipped, had two bedrooms, was spotlessly clean, well equipped and came at a great price made this probably one of the best Airbnbs that we have stayed in so far.

If I had to be picky, because of its location there was a very steep drive and a flight of steps to get you to the front door so it would not be suitable if you had mobility issues. Other than that, if you ever decide to visit Auckland and are looking for accommodation, I think you will be hard-pressed to find anything better than this Airbnb.

Auckland to Gisborne

New Zealand is mainly made up of two islands. Auckland is on the North Island and we had flown into this airport because 500 kilometres east of Auckland is Gisborne, the location of our first house sit.

We had been told that the Intercity bus company is the best way to get from city to city so we decided to put it to the test. The journey took ten hours but the bus was comfortable and during the journey, we got our real first look at the amazing landscape of New Zealand. Our first impression was what a truly beautiful country this was.

We spent the whole journey looking through the windows marvelling at the incredible beauty of the countryside. Ten hours of what seemed like a non-stop continuous show of greener-than-green lush vegetation, beaches, trees, and mountains. Probably one of the most scenic coach journeys we have ever taken.

New Zealand House Sit Number One – Gisborne

The cost of the journey was just £40 each, the time flew past and before we knew it, we were arriving in the city of Gisborne where our home host was kindly waiting to take us to what was to be our home for the next three weeks.

This was to be a great start to our New Zealand trip. Maureen, our home host could not have been more welcoming. She was to leave for her holiday the following day so she bought us dinner and gave us lots of information about the city and surrounding areas.

The home was lovely and spacious with a large garden to enjoy the sunny days that lay ahead. She also kindly left us her car to use which was a great help. This meant it was much easier for us to travel around and explore the surrounding area.

The Pets

There were three pets here to care for. Two dogs – Molly & Georgie, and Max the cat. All three were adorable and very low maintenance.

Molly and Georgie both loved being with us and happily followed us around the house and garden. Georgie is a Griffin so very small, a bit of a princess and loved to be sitting on our knee whenever she spotted the opportunity. Molly is a mixed breed. The bigger dog, and would constantly lie by our feet, moving only when we did.

They are both really good-natured dogs that walked well on their leads which made taking them for walks a pleasure. They even got me to let them sleep on our bed which I would normally not do but with these two, it was too difficult to say no!

Max the cat was far more independent. He left the house every morning and then returned in the evening to snuggle up on the settee with us. Although he didn’t spend too much time indoors he was never too far away. He could usually be found in his special place in the garden where he spent most of his time fast asleep in the shade.

All the pets got on well with each other and loved two things the most. Chicken and being groomed. We only had to walk into the garden holding a pack of chicken nibbles or the grooming brush for them all to appear out of nowhere to wait their turn.

The Area

Depending on whom you ask, Gisborne is either the city of sun, the city of wine, the city of beer, the city of beaches or the city of surf.

As the most easterly city in New Zealand, Gisborne is the first city in the world to see the sun each morning. It is famous throughout New Zealand for being the home of the sunshine brewery. Some of the best Chardonnay wine in the world comes from here and with miles of great surfing beaches along its coast it is hard to argue with any of the above!

As an introduction to New Zealand, we probably could not have picked a better place. It has a large Maori population with many from the Maori community in the streets easily recognisable by their facial tattoos

It is a tourist hotspot during the summer months attracted by the beautiful beaches but also has a thriving permanent population making it an all-year destination.

The chances of getting lost here are next to impossible with one long road running straight through the middle of the city. This road leads from the vineyards in the South of the city, then carries on straight through the town centre and, without a single turning ends up at Waikanae beach in the North.

Gisborne is also famous because, in 1769, it is the place where Captain James Cook first set foot on New Zealand soil. The surgeon’s assistant on board the HMS Endeavour was a twelve-year-old boy named Nicholas ( Nick) Young.

It was Nick who was the first to spot land.

Statues of both Captain Cook and Nick Young can be found on Kaiti Beach Road in Gisborne.

There are mentions of Captain Cook to be found all over the city used in the names of many streets, hotels, bars etc.

Sightseeing

Having a car to use during our stay really did prove to be a real bonus and allowed us to easily visit some places outside of Gisborne.

The roads here are wide, well-maintained and there are far fewer cars.

Add to this the beautiful, often breathtaking scenery meant that driving has been a pleasure.

Admittedly, with a beautiful beach on our doorstep tearing ourselves away from them was not easy. We did however make time to drive along the coast visiting other beaches, hiking trails, and waterfalls.

One day we visited Tolga Bay and, before taking a hike along the beautiful Cooks Cove Walkway we got to walk along the Tolaga Bay wharf, which, at 660 meters into the ocean is the longest wharf in the southern hemisphere.

Where next?

November can only be described as an amazing month. I can’t believe that it has already been a month since we arrived in New Zealand slightly frazzled after the long journey.

Here we are now. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. One month is gone by already.

Our first impressions of the country are that we love it. Everything seems very laid back. The streets are clean, the people are friendly, and there is so much space!

We will miss Gisborne with Molly, Georgie and Max, but once again it is time for us to move on.

We are leaving the North Island and going to the South Island next. This is where we will be spending Christmas 2022 and welcoming the New Year of 2023.

I’ll tell you how it goes next time.

Until then, as always, thanks for reading and we wish you a very Merry Christmas

Colin & Karyo xx