I've wanted a drone for awhile now but have held off until the software was smarter. Mostly because previous experiences with flying things remotely has never really gone well for me, and flying $4,000+ over a cliff does not appeal to my inner Scrooge.  The DJI Spark was released which not only has intelligent flight modes, but an excellent return-to-home feature which appealed as a place to start.  Day 1 I almost lost a finger. A month or so later I pulled a muscle, or nerve or something, jumping a fence to retrieve the drone from the gorse dense bush behind my house.  And finally To View More >>

Patience is a Virtue or something Our second day in Firenze we spent exploring the city by wandering somewhat aimlessly which has beceome my favourite method of touristing.  Whilst wandering the streets, we came across the  Santi Michele e Gaetano, where I made poor Emma wait so I could get the photo of the priest standing alone outside the church in just the right spot. He paced back and forth for nearly 10 mins before he stopped there.  We also came across the Uffizi Gallery, Palazzo Vecchio and the markets near Piazza del Duomo where we stopped for lunch.  New Obsessions To View More >>

After our short stop in Pisa and the Italian McDonalds we took the train to Firenze. The Firenze train station was a short walk to our accomodation, Chez Aline (located on Via Ventisette Aprile)  which is a sweet and inexpensive hotel with the world's tiniest elevators. As it turns out, elevators are exceptionally small in a lot of Europe. We just managed to fit both our suitcases in then ran up the stairs to collect them two floors up.  Aline is a good location, nearby to museums and a two minute walk to a laundrette (Lavanderia Il Delfino) . There's also a pharmacy and some great To View More >>

Pisa, Italy The best way to wait for a train anywhere involves sitting in a bar in the sun/shade with a glass of rosé.  After getting out of the Pisa airport we headed straight to the tower to get the most touristy part of our trip out of the way. It's a tower. It leans. That's about all I can say about it. My OCD doesnt like things wonky so I can't say it was a highlight. I took the token photo of it (with Snapchat no less, dont even think I got my actual camera out) and then we went off to find a place to lunch. Our train to Firenze wasn't for a couple for hours so we found this quiet To View More >>

A Ghostly Procession After departing the national park, soaking wet and hallucinating moving mountains, we set off to the next accomodation. The one downside to travelling Iceland in the winter is how dark it gets so quickly. We chose winter for a chance of seeing the Northern Lights but this did mean that the days were short. Because of this we had planned to view the Glacier Lagoon the next morning but as we passed by it to get to the Guesthouse the sight of colossal chunks of glacial ice floating in a lagoon as the sun was starting to set was too much to pass up.  Jökulsárlón To View More >>

The road to Vatnajökull National Park is strange and varied. From vast expanses of volcanic rock to some unusal moss, every few kilometers it was almost as if we were changing countries as we drove.  The moss is somewhat well-known since that the Biebs got in trouble for frolicking in it. It was cordoned off at the viewing point we stopped at and the fields extend as far as we could see. It was pretty impressive. The moss is exceptionally fragile - it's soft and very spongey. The green is vibrant and bright, especially so with a rainy grey sky behind it.  The other To View More >>

Visited Iceland in November and it was stunningly beautiful. Unfortunately it rained (and POURED) most of the time we were there so I did not get as many photos as I would have liked but the experience itself was incredible.  After landing in Keflavik International Airport the lovely Odin from Ace Rental Cars collected us from the airport and took us to their office to pick up our rental car. This meant no waiting in queues at the airport and Odin was friendly and helped us start off in the right direction. Ace is a family owned business and they were lovely to deal with. I had planned To View More >>

New Backyard, New Visitors Last year I posted about a pretty cool visitor to my backyard (check it out here) and when I had to move from Whenuapai I was a little bit disappointed that living closer to the city I might not get as many opportunities to see New Zealand bird life quite as close up.  My first day in the new house brought with it some beautiful Kingfishers flying about outside the kitchen window. I was busy unpacking however, so just took it as a good sign of things to come.  So the bad news first. Having an (incredibly small) portion of bush area behind your house isn't To View More >>

Living in Auckland often earns you the derision of the rest of the country, but it's home and I love it. I don't doubt the beauty of the rest of the country, NZ is beautiful, but Auckland has it's little gems too. One of those places for me has always been Bomb Point. Up until recently Bomb Point has been open to the public. Thanks to urban sprawl and the current construction going on over there, it's been closed off, so I was pretty lucky one of my previous flatmates showed it to me before that happened. It's 11 hectares of land, at what used to be a munitions dump for the Royal New Zealand To View More >>

It's not often I'm out of a coverage zone for any length of time and never usually in a place that I would describe as breath taking. Pawarenga, in the very far north of the North Island of New Zealand, definitely fit that description.  My cousin and I made the journey, getting up very early in the morning to this beautiful sunrise. A stunning start to a long drive.  Many hours, and a very long and windy drive, later we made it to the bay and marae at Pawarenga where my cousin's family are from. The area is simply amazing. The historic St Gabriel's Church (featured in the David To View More >>