Best of Australia & New Zealand 2-Week Itinerary

Our trip was awesome!  Our travel agent stayed in contact with us while planning our trip. All of the hotels we stayed in were booked by her.  Each place could take your breath away.  We were always made comfortable and if we needed anything, they would make sure we had it. We even had turn down service in some of the hotels.  We felt so pampered!  We are not use to this.  This trip was a lifetime of experiences and memories. 

You are awesome at what you do!  We will never be able to repay you for all your services to us in helping us plan our trip!  We have also given your name to our Sisters' in Law because they plan on making a trip to Australia and New Zealand in a few years.  I hope you are still there. 

We were able to sit back and enjoy all the views because we did not have to drive anywhere!  To us, that was a plus, plus, plus! Our agent made all travel arrangements for us in Australia and New Zealand. 

Itinerary:  day 1:  flew into Sydney, Australia.  Slept for about an hour and then took a cruise around the harbor-took the premium cruise and had a glass of champagne.  We were taken around the harbor and saw the water view and learned of the history of Australia.

day 2:  Took the tour of the Opera House-this was a back stage tour.  After this we took a guided tour of the harbor in land.  We were the only ones on this tour.  Our guide was so patient with us and took into consideration that I had a problem with stairs. He was awesome.  I am bad about names, but I would recommend him anytime. We had a fabulous lunch at the Crusing Yacht Club of Australia.  We were able to walk some of the beach and see sights from a different view.  All along we are being giving the history of Australia.  He was very nice!

day 3:  Took a guided tour to the Blue Mountains.  Our guide was really great. I want to tell him that he is a good Story Teller!  In the Native American Culture, that is what he would be considered.  He even brought a snack that he prepared himself.  This was pretty much an all day tour.  We had lunch at a restaurant in the Blue Mountains.  I so loved this part of the trip.  An absolute must to see this part of Australia.

day 4:  took a shuttle to the Airport to Cairns, Australia.  Checked into the hotel-It was so beautiful!  We were across a small street from the beach and ocean. 

day 5:  took a full day tour through sailing and snorkeling in at the Great Barrier Reef.  It was awesome.  It was a catamaran.  We had lunch while we were out. 

day 6:  Took a 1 hour hot air balloon ride.  It was so exciting.  You just have to do this.

day 7:  Our transportation company took us to the Cairns Airport and we flew to New Zealand.  We checked into the Auckland hotel.  It was beautiful.  We asked the concierge for a place to eat that would give us an idea of the culture.  We walked and went to Danny Doolans.  We loved it.

day 8:  We took a guided tour to the Glow Worm Caves. Our driver was so nice.  There was only one other person that joined us.  Even though I have a problem with stairs, I was able to walk this tour.  It was so cool to see this. We then ate at a farm that had a luncheon set up.  I loved the potatoes and the chicken. 

day 9. We were picked up by a private chauffer who took us to the Hobbiton Shires.  It is exactly as I expected!  We also had the buffet. It also was wonderful. He was a wonderful chauffer.  He took really good care of us.  We returned at 11:30 pm at our hotel.  We were exhausted.

day 10.  flew from Auckland, New Zealand to Sydney Austrailia.  Then flew from Sydney, Austrailia to LAX, Los Angels, California.  Then flew from Los Angels, LAX to Medford, Oregon. 

Our trip down under went without a hitch and was totally awesome! The hotel locations and tours spot on and just what we were hoping for. To and from the airport transportation all as was told on time and ready to go. The city tours, Melbourne, Port Douglas, Sydney, Queenstown, Rotorua, the winery tour, the Great Barrier Reef, feeding the kangaroos and wallabies, the Oprera House, the Penguins March, the Geo thermal area, Milford Sound, Dart River boat ride super cool, and top it off with a visit to Hobbiton just magical! Thanks so much for all the help in making our trip down under one to remember for years to come!

As we brainstormed Australia trip, our goal was to scuba dive on great barrier reef.  The tour planner did a great job of pointing out the pluses and minuses of live aboard 4 day option, highlighting jelly fish issue at Hamilton Island during December, long boat rides from Port Douglas, and ultimately guiding us to consider Fiji as a beautiful scuba option that was easy to access from land.  He recommended VOMO island which turned out fantastic....easy to access from Nadi Intl airport, felt completely remote, excellent food and variety, beautiful accommodations, scuba diving 10 min off shore, hiking, snorkeling and fitness club to enjoy as well and literally no one on the beach in either direction.  I would never have found this place without the tour planner and it was perfect for our entire family.  I'd make the choice to go to VOMO island over Hawaii....definitely worth the extra flight time.   The tour planner also chose the ranger penguin tour rather than the standard tour at Phillips Island near Melbourne which was a definite plus and gave us small viewing area of 30 people compared to the 4000 in the general viewing area.  Apartments in Melbourne also had all the amenities we were looking for and in good location

Thanks for asking for feedback. It truly is the key to continued client satisfaction and referral. Here is some information about our trip.

When I have time, I would like to write up all my notes, but that will take a while.

In general, we had an AWESOME time! This was a BIG deal for us, and your itinerary and the hotels and taking care of all that stuff, made it doable and for the most part, worry free. The hotels especially, were VERY very nice.

On the way home, I informally rated everything we did/encountered as a + or – based on whether it exceeded or missed our (lofty) expectations. We had 24 + and 10 – so overall that’s excellent. And the +’s in most cases were much more rewarding than the –‘s were disappointing. Here’s what we liked the most, in order:

1. Milford trip -- off the charts positive! While expensive, it was worth every penny. The Wanderer had just been refurbished. It was superb. We didn’t need to phantom book the fourth person, as it had only 30 of 36 spots filled, but that’s not a big deal. We worried too much about the shared bathroom….no berths had one and it was not a big deal at all. In fact we liked the smaller atmosphere and crew a lot. I would do this again in a heartbeat. The scenery was at a Yosemite level, maybe better bc it rained on the way down, then cleared for our cruise and the waterfalls were at their max. simply awesome! Photo of our family on boat.

2. Queenstown – electric and fun. They were filming the Hobbit and Orlando Bloom was in town, Film crew at the Novotel. Lots of stuff to do.

3. Great barrier reef --- gorgeous day, and fun snorkel, vivid colors…needs to be seen in person

4. Wine tour on Waiheke -- Ananda did great job and as mentioned in earlier note, Coleen got the Lunch at Mudbrick print…need I say more (see our photo looking back at Auckland). Saw 300 year old Pohutukawa trees. Photo from winery table.

5. Sydney w Claire – so fun to see her…ran us ragged. Hotel location could not have been better. WE had transportation passes that got us on all busses, trains ferries…very worthwhile. Note sunrise photo from roof of the Holiday inn! One tip -- look at pic I’ll send…we went on the Sydney bridge tower climb for $11 and got almost as high as the actual bridge climb for $165. we saw as much, and saved time and money.

6. bike rental/ride in Auckland…Coleen and I rented bikes and rode along harbor to Mission Bay. Only $15 @. Easy ride and great scenery, when we’d thought riding a bike in Auckland would be scary. We love to bike ride and the rental down on Commerce and Quay was a pleasant surprise.

7. Daintree – Jamie from Back country Bliss was super. I suppose we could have rented a car and gotten the audio tape for $12 but not sure we’d have learned as much and certainly would not have seen the cassowaries. We’d thought our tour included the zipline, so we added it for $190 and it was underwhelming. Would not repeat that, especially when we ziplined later in ZQN that was truly exhilarating.

Some other pros and cons form your perspective, Jillian :

Hotels were awesome. We appreciated them from the start, and it was nice to know we would not be disappointed about our stay each night. I’m guessing they were more than we’d normally have paid for, but for this experience, they were perfect! Thanks!

Itinerary in general was very good and gave us chance to see so much. We could easily have spent more time everywhere – each spot was a destination in itself – but what a selection of the best of the best!

All the paperwork and vouchers and bookings details were nice to have taken care of.

Qantas was impressive! Thanks!

There a couple of glitches, though --- having us get up at 6:20am the first day after 32 hours of travel to drive an hour back to Cairns, when there were plenty of GBR tours right in Port Douglas, wasn’t good. The fine folks at Martinique, which we LOVED, helped us with this.

The shuttle from SYD to Holiday Inn didn’t work as planned, and took some intervention from the air[port transportation desk. It was rush hour which didn’t help.

The shuttle from Orari to CHC was cut too close…it was booked with 2 hours but the flight was changed to an hour earlier and somehow the shuttle was not changed accordingly. We made it, barely, with some worry.

We should have booked the car rental ZQN to Greymouth for 1pm pick up. That would have saved a day (which we ended up doing anyway) and given us another morning in ZQN to do stuff. Franz Josef was fun but the heli-hike was over-rated, at least it was for those of us who spend winters in the snow. I guess +Claire enjoyed first helicopter ride, but the glacier was just a bunch of dirty decaying snow…not that big of deal.