Ten reasons why you should visit New Zealand NOW

by Grant Martin on


With more and more people losing jobs and the economy shrinking, many people think that now is a terrible time to travel overseas. Fearing tremors in their jobs or their 401Ks, workers may often choose to stay at home this year, or maybe even work right through their time off.

But in one place, the timing is perfect for holiday travel. The combination of a favorable exchange rate, excellent plane tickets and lower demand has created the perfect storm of a budget traveler’s paradise, guarantying endless thrills, beautiful landscapes and wonderful food at a fraction of the cost.

That place? New Zealand. So why should you go in these troubled times? Here are ten great reasons:1. The Dollar: The thin silver lining around the recession is that the dollar is gaining ground against many foreign currencies. New Zealand is an excellent example, with the exchange rate at about 1.8:1 (at writing). That means that everything is half off. Skydiving, whitewater rafting, sailing, bungee jumping, tours of Hobbiton and even dinner is half off.

2. Delicious, cheap wine: Both New Zealand islands have recently been enjoying a boom in wine production. Helped partially by the drop in output from Australia (due to the recent brush fires,) Kiwi wine is widespread, inexpensive and quite delicious to boot.

You can take wine tours from Auckland (try the Mudbrick) or venture south into the Marlborough region to mix in some beautiful landscape as well.

3. Fare Wars: Ever since V Australia entered the transpacific market, fares between the United States and Australia/New Zealand have been outstanding. Several Gadling bloggers reached Sydney from Los Angeles for under $500 earlier this year, and even now, tickets are hovering around the $800 range. At about this time last year, these prices were around $2,000.

4. It’s an outdoor activity playground: New Zealand’s varied landscape includes lush, bucolic plains, rolling hills, sweeping glaciers and magnificent mountains, all within a span smaller than the state of Texas. You can bungee jump, swim through glowworm caves and white water raft all in the same day, and if that’s not enough, mountain biking, skydiving and sailing are a hop, skip and a jump away.

5. Because the economy needs us: With all of this belt tightening going around, the global economy is starting to stutter and contract. The only solution? Take some of that money out from under your bed and enjoy a healthy holiday. Just don’t put it on your credit card.

6. You’re going to sleep magnificently: At 5-8 hours behind the United States, You’re going to be struggling pretty hard to stay up until 10PM every day. And irrespective of whether you’re sleeping on a five star pillow top mattress or under the bar pool table, you’re going to collapse exhausted, sleep like a baby and wake up refreshed at 7AM the next day, with a full night’s sleep and ready to take on the Kiwi.

Furthermore, you don’t have to deal with any truncated redeye flights like those to the EU. With some fifteen hours to kill on your outbound journey, you’re bound to get your first night’s sleep in.

7. Because you’re leaving your job anyway: If you haven’t already been laid off, you’re terrified that you might get the ax any day now. Why not take a fraction of your savings and ride out the recession overseas?

8. They already speak English: No need to worry about asking for directions, negotiating prices or buying produce in another language, Kiwis are the friendliest people on the planet and are always willing to chat. As a bonus, some youngsters even find the American accent attractive.

9. Excellent Food: Its fertile soil and supple fishing waters make New Zealand a prime location for fresh produce, seafood, cattle and lamb. These strengths are reflected both in the grocery store, with plentiful, healthy selections and at restaurants, where chefs create exotic, delicious plates at very reasonable prices.

Coffee culture is outstanding as well, with a cafe on nearly every corner of the country, each with extremely high quality beans, standards and practices.

10. Because you may never get the same opportunity: This crazy combination of cheap tickets and a strong dollar may not come back for a while — perhaps in your lifetime. Don’t regret saving a few dollars now when the missed opportunity of a lifetime could haunt you for years.

Lonely Planet names top 10 “weird” cities

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Top 10 lists are the lifeblood of blogging. How else, dear reader, can we quickly inform you of all you need to know about a topic in a format that is quick to read and simultaneously entertaining? The end of the year is fertile ground for top 10 lists, providing an opportunity to take a look at the previous 365 days and gaze at the marvelous things that have come to pass.

With this in mind, travel publication extraordinaire Lonely Planet has published their 2008 list of the “world’s top 10 weirdest cities” as part of their book, Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2009. Here’s a few of their picks:

  • Tokyo, Japan – I don’t think anyone is going to argue with this one
  • Las Vegas, Nevada – true only if you find $5 all-you-can-eat lobster tails to be eccentric
  • Ashgabat, Turkmenistan – a country with flaming holes and an eccentric dictator definitely qualifies in our book
  • Amsterdam, The Netherlands – whoa, cannabis and sex shows. So weird!
  • Guanajuato, Mexico – I had always thought of Guanajuato as a charming Mexican colonial city, but that’s wrong. Apparently they have mummies. Mummies!

Anyone interested in checking out the full list can find it here. You have to wonder who was in charge of compiling these cities, but considering that Gadling might some day want to publish their own book of top 10’s, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

What do you think of this list of top 10 weird cities? Think it’s a load of crap? Have any cities you think they left out? Leave us a comment below and tell us about your favorite weird city.

Ten things you didn’t know about Dublin

by Grant Martin on

Visiting any city for the first time is an exercise in setting expectations. You can only read so much about the culture, nightlife and food in a guidebook before you need to experience the locals first hand, order a pint of Guinness or eat shepherd’s pie and really visit a destination. Setting foot out into the city streets, you begin to compare your first hand experiences against everything that you thought you knew about a destination. In some facets, you’re surprised and impressed by the difference; in others, you’re underwhelmed.

Taking advantage of some weekend work in the Emerald Isle, I recently spent some time in the capital city for my first trip to Ireland. I was moved most by the ten things below:

  • You’re never going to want to eat Shepherd’s Pie at your local Irish pub again. No, Dublin isn’t known for its pinky-up food culture, but the things that they get right they really get right.
  • The city revolves around drinking. To that end, bar crawling in Dublin can be performed quite literally. One only needs to mosey down two or three store fronts before he or she discovers another pub almost identical to the one that was just left. It’s disorienting enough having a bar on all four corners of every intersection in the downtown area – now try doing it with 17 pints of Smithwicks in your stomach. Currently, the drinking problem has become so profound that there is a massive public effort to curb binge drinking, the majority of which is found in telly and bus ads trying to guilt people out of overindulging.
  • There isn’t really that much to see besides the 976,000 bars. Yes, Dublin has a couple of excellent museums, Trinity College, Phoenix Park and the Guinness factory (does that even count?), but compared to some of the heavy hitters in the EU like Rome or Paris, Dublin’s “cultural” fodder is a bit anemic — which isn’t to say that the city isn’t worth visiting, either. I’m personally a bar and cafe sort of person, so I found the area quite charming.
  • Temple Bar is not an enormous tourist trap. It’s a tourist trap, yes, but in the same sense that Times Square is. Just like everyday New Yorkers visit 42nd street, real Irish can be found in the district just south of the river, you can get a good shepherd’s pie and there is plenty of cultural flavor in the area. Make sure you stop by at least once during your stay.
  • Phoenix park is the largest city park in all of Europe. Just Northwest of the hailed Temple Bar, you can walk around Phoenix for an hour and barely scrape the surface of the massive plot. Much of the perfectly tailored grass is on limits, so you can feel free to walk awry from the winding paths, take your shoes off and really absorb the fertilizer into your bare feet. Contrast this to the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, where hundreds of locals pull up chairs to the edge of the path just to watch the grass silently sit there undisturbed.
  • Skyscrapers are nonexistent downtown. In fact, the tallest series of buildings around town happen to be in the network of Guinness buildings. Which leads us to:
  • Guinness sponsors everything. In addition to their near omnipresence in every pub (and hence on every corner in the city,) the beer company also has independent retail stores where you can buy branded underwear and sheets, sponsors athletic teams and appears to be the impetus behind 9 out of 10 business deals in the country.
  • Shamrocks, Leprechauns and pots of gold are all out. We think that Guinness bought the patent on each of these ideas and swallowed them into the beer empire.
  • It’s going to rain. Really. They don’t call it the Emerald Isle because it’s known for arid plains and rolling deserts. It rains here like the heavens just broke up with their long term girlfriend. A good rule of thumb is to take any precipitation forecast you saw on the news and multiply it by four.
  • Riverdance is ridiculous. But it does happen. And people eat it up like pigeons fighting for popcorn. Several of the more touristy hotels even offer the spectacle nightly, where hundreds of tourists amass during the evening hours to watch a few poor sots dance their hearts out and spin in circles. If you’re really interested in finding something of this sort in Dublin, just follow the mess of fanny packs at around 9PM and you’ll inevitably reach a venue.