New Zealand

We're starting to lose track of the number of visits we've had to New Zealand. It's such a beautiful country - quite similar to Canada, in fact - that it's been an easy decision to visit it often given our proximity to it from Canberra.

This visit, we focused entirely on the North Island.  We visited Lake Taupo to relax and view geothermal sites, Hobbiton to see the set of LOTR, and Paeroa to visit the L&P cafe (for Blair). Last, but not least, we finished our tour by spending a lovely week in the beautiful city of Wellington.

Here are some photos from our visit to Lake Taupo:

Geothermal spas at Wairakei Terraces

Stacy enjoying the naturally-heated spas!

Here are some photos from Hobbiton:

And for Blair, here are some photos of our tour around Paeroa (where his favorite soft drink is/was made):

And finally, photos from the beautiful city of Wellington:

Oriental Bay

Matty meets the Beehive

The Canadian Minister of Finance was visiting on this day

LOTR characters in the Wellington Airport

LOTR characters in the Wellington Airport

Canberra Multicultural Festival

In February, we had the opportunity to visit Canberra's Multicultural Festival (now called the National Multicultural Festival). We missed it the first year we lived here because we didn't know about it (!!!) but this year it was marked in our calendar at least 8 months ahead of time. We even planned some of our vacations around this event. In other words, there was no way we were going to miss it again! This is, in our opinion, Canberra's best festival.

There are literally hundreds (thousands, perhaps) of booths/stalls representing countries from around the world (what better place to do this than in a city full of diplomats!).  Each booth represented a single country and served traditional dishes, wines, and beer from their home. You name the food - they had it there! Everything from Spanish paella, New Zealand hangi, American hot dogs (haha), Croatian cevapi, Hungarian langos (these were awesome!), Bavarian pretzels, Korean bulgogi, Indian/Malaysian/Indonesian curries and noodle dishes, Irish stew, Yorkshire Pudding, Canadian pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, etc. You get the idea!

Here are some of the very few pictures we took while we were there - we were too busy eating!