Rydges Palmerston North

... Land. I want my taste buds to tingle with excitement in anticipation of a delicious new dish. I want to smell the saltiness of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans as I cut through the waves on a surfboard. <br><br>"Freedom &#8220;what a word. You can talk all day about what it truly means to be free. Without ripping that word apart or over analyzing it from a religious point of view, I feel this journey will be the closest ill ever come to it. <br><br><br><br><br> <br>

... Yup, soon after arriving we went round the corner to Robert Harris which was a great cafe where we had some food, coffee and cake :) In response to a suggestion from Sarah's dad I am introducing a town-themed rating for measuring the quality of a cafe's cake and coffee. The rating will be themed depending on what we remember about the town or what it's famous for so for Palmerston North it's the duck-o-meter! The levels suggested were 'fluffy feathers and beak ...

... Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. In Alaska they are known as Inupiat and Yup'ik Eskimos, Alutiiq and Athabascans; in Greenland they are the Kalaallit and Inughuit; in northern Fennoscandia the Saami; and in the Russian North, the 26 so-called 'Northern Minorities' include the Chukchi, Evens, Evenks, Nenets, Nivkhi, Saami, Sakhas and Khants (Nuttall). Article 1 of the ...

... with petrol and handed it over to the very nice rental car lady who assured us another car would await us when we docked in Wellington. Avis on the ground here really has its act together (unlike Avis on the toll-free "Zero/Eight hundred" number where they are clueless about all things). We drove 3004 kilometers on the South Island which equals 1867 miles. We were on the South Island for ten nights. The South Island covers about the same amount of square miles as the states of ...

... to NZ). Arrived at Wellington at 1pm where we were met by Richard (of the Richard and Virginia we met at the wedding and stayed with in january). Was great to see him and he gave us a big hug and helped get our bags in the car. It was raining cats and dogs so we were jolly glad to see him! Had a good catch up with them both when we got to their house and pretty much spent the entire afternoon reading etc as it was a wet day. They had a ...

... Organic River festival the following week so first tried to contact the guy who runs this as he takes on wwoofers at his winery in the local area. Phoned a couple of times but he decided that he was too busy to have us stay there at the moment, so we contacted Fay and she said yes within about 2 seconds of talking to her! So glad that she did because we loved her place and she was brilliant too. She owned a smallholding in ...

... drive to Palmerston North. The city of doom. The centre of nowhere. Truly the dumping ground of New Zealand. Or at least so I had been led to believe. I took a very scenic route down there - partially because I would go through places I hadn't seen and partially because it wasn't the way suggested to me and I wanted to prove it was a quicker route. So competitive, but at least I could see new things! The route took me down the west ...

... The weather changed again for our trip to the beach (well it is autumn!) and we were court in the middle of another drizzle pour. This meant we did not get to see very much of the beach at all. Another afternoon in the spa and a night in front of Lord of the Rings (choruses of been there, been there could be heard ringing around the beach!)

We left Wellington and drove northwards through the centre of the island to Whanganui, a large town straddling the Whanganui River on the coast below Tongariro National Park. We stayed in a cabin that had everything we needed; an en suite, kitchen and most importantly TV and free wireless Internet (well $15 for our entire stay - so almost free). We decided to stay a couple of days, even though there isn't much to do in Whanganui, so we could take advantage of the internet ...

Our next stop was Palmerston North, where we visited Massey University, the second largest university in the country, with 39,000 students, twelve percent of whom are Maori. Library director John Redmayne called it "a standard New Zealand university library." In a country of only four million, the eight universities compete for about 157,000 students, most of whom commute. Since New Zealand now has one of the world's lowest rates of unemployment, there is a ...