Vacation recap

As promised, here's a summary of all of our vacation posts, in case you missed anything. Back to my daily life when/if I return...

It all started in April, when we first purchased our tickets for a sweet trip around the Pacific, shortly before the Star Alliance doubled the price and restrictions on Circle Pacific fares: phew!!

You didn't really hear much more about it until we were on our way and passing time in the San Francisco airport.

And then we took our first real look at the Sydney skyline and even though it was overcast, it was beautiful.

We got to be really busy, having so much fun on the trip, so I posted this, and that's about it, until I posted a teaser and told you to wait for NaBloPoMo.

Then I started really telling you about our trip
from the Sydney bridge climb,
to the rainforest,
to the beach at the lovely Thala Resort
and snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef
(at which point you were totally jealous of our outfits),
and back to Sydney
for the zoo,
the Royal Botanic Gardens,
Bondi beach,
the Manly-to-Spit "walk"
and a tearful goodbye to our new favorite city.

Then I told you about New Zealand
including our amazing friends who hosted us at their lovely B&B and took us out for wine tasting.
I showed you the lovely Lake Wanaka,
Puzzling World in Wanaka,
sights from a plane above Wanaka,
and a lovely hike near Wanaka (click on the panoramic! it's worth it!).
And I showed you
our glacier hike,
the views from my window on our road trip across the South Island,
the quaint town of Hokitika (go to this page and vote for your favorite picture!! if you haven't already, that is),
and the big city of Christchurch.

And then there was Tokyo, crowded and crazy and 180 degrees different from New Zealand, but cool in its own way, because it has
fish markets,
beautiful parks (the Imperial Palace and Hibiya Park),
Shinto shrines (the Meiji Shrine),
terrific shopping and fantastic people watching,
a great national museum,
Buddhist temples (Senso-ji),
more gardens, conveyor belt sushi and surprisingly amazing Belgian waffles.

It was an amazing trip.

Really truly amazing.

Thanks for letting me re-live it.