Novotel Sydney Darling Square
17 Little Pier St. Sydney
33°52′39″ S 151°12′11″ E

We were up early this morning to head to the airport in Auckland to return our rental car & then fly “back” to Sydney.

We got our rental car back to the airport in plenty of time to check in for our flight. During our time in New Zealand we drove approximately 2,500 kilometers around the North Island without any incidents. What a fantastic place to visit! (Photo below is copied from the internet – New Zealand’s north & south islands as seen from space).

Driving in NZ seemed easier that when we drove in the UK a few years ago. I think having a car with an automatic transmission helped a lot – compared to our car in the UK that had a 5-speed manual transmission.

Most of the roads we were on here were wider with only two lanes for the most part & had paved shoulders so that helped a lot too. Catherine was a lot more comfortable in the passenger seat on this trip & was able to dispose of the paper bag after just a few hours on the road.

Checking in for our flight to Sydney took a lot longer than we had planned – almost 2 hours. Several Air New Zealand flights were cancelled or delayed, the automatic kiosks were having lots of problems & as a result the lineups were horrendous. Thankfully we had lots of time before our flight so the waiting wasn’t anything more than an inconvenience for us.

We chatted with a woman in line with us who was flying home to Sydney. She had already evacuated her home twice in the past few weeks due to the bush fires and was expecting to have to do so again when she got back. It’s a disastrous situation for the country.

Farewell New Zealand!

We had a 3-hour flight to Sydney & arrived at around 1:30 in the afternoon.

Hello Australia! Traveling from one boater’s paradise to another in the same day is almost too much to handle!

They have “everything” in Australia – even modern “two holers” in Sydney’s airport’s public bathrooms!

After briefly visiting this highlight I caught up with Catherine & we took a shuttle to our hotel from the airport. Well, we thought it was our hotel. We went to the Novotel Darling Harbour but when we tried to check in to our room we were told that we were supposed to be at Novotel Darling Square – another property about 1 km away. Whoda thought that there would be two Novotel Hotels so close to each other?

We decided to walk from one hotel to the other. Some kind souls helped us find our way alongside the harbour and we were settled into our room by 3:00.

Our hotel is at the end of the harbour & there are dozens of restaurants & shops within a very short walking distance. The entire waterfront area is developed as public space for pedestrians only. We will have lots to explore over the next few days.

The city is blanketed with haze from the bush fires but there was some rain tonight so that dampened things down a bit.

There are usually fireworks on Saturday nights over the harbour but they have been cancelled out of respect for all the hardship caused by the fires.

We will stay here for the next 5 nights before we board the cruise ship so it will be nice to be in one place for a while. Lots to see & do here!

We will start off tomorrow with an exciting walking tour of the local neighborhood in search of a laundromat. Reality approaches.

Cheers!

Hobbiton Movie Set
37.8723° S, 175.6834° E

Today we went to visit Hobbiton, the movie set for the Hobbit village called The Shire in the Lord of the Rings & Hobbit movies series.

The movie set is in the middle of active farmland but cannot be seen from any roads as it is located in a couple of small, deep valleys.

This seclusion was the main reason the area was selected for the movie set.

The whole operation is very well designed to handle thousands of tourists each day. Car & tour bus parking is in a separate area & you must take a special bus to get to the actual movie set. An on site bus loaded with 30 people departs every 15 minutes & each bus has a guide who leads your group on a tour of Hobbiton.

At first we wondered why we needed a guide but it quickly became obvious that the entire site & set would be in total chaos if people were allowed to simply wander around on their own.

Our tour guide was a young woman named Jordan & she was excellent! She explained all of the history of the movie set & gave us an explanation about each of the Hobbit homes on the site.

She also had lots of interesting trivia about the set & the actors. At one point during the movie filming there were more than 400 people on the site – actors, film crew, props and maintenance people!

The picture below is Bag End, home of Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins.

The first time the Shire was created, it was never intended to last much more than the three months of filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The entire set was dismantled, only leaving a few stone steps & the site returned to be used as sheep grazing land.

When Peter Jackson wanted to film the Hobbit trilogy in the same location, the land owner & the movie company partners decided to build a more permanent set that would be left behind as a tourist attraction. It took two years to re-create the set that was used for only 12 days of filming! Below is the home of Samwise Gamgee, featured in the last scene of The Return of the King.

The entire set was quite charming with beautiful gardens outside each Hobbit house. But all the Hobbit Houses are in fact, facades, with the doors opening only to reveal to a retaining wall behind. It gave us a glimpse into the magic of film making.

The tour concluded at the Green Dragon Inn shown above where everyone was treated to a mug of beer or cider.

Wally’s buying!

Step up to the bar!

It was a great morning & we had lots of fun.

After the tour we were back on the road again, this time headed to Auckland for an overnight stay at a hotel near the airport.

Tomorrow we fly “back” to Sydney.

Cheers!