Travelling Closer to Home

As you will know if you’ve read our Where We’ve Travelled series, we like to travel.

Time and money are the only things that stop us from travelling more often. We only get four weeks of leave each year and, given we’re on the path to Early Retirement, we are trying to save as much as we can so can’t spend it all on travel.

But, we do make travel a priority in our lives. Our last big trip was our honeymoon to Fiji, and we also spent a week in Hobart in May. Apart from that, however, we haven’t done a lot of travel this year due to being busy with our big move to Canberra and me starting a new job.

On a bit of a whim, we decided to travel to New Zealand in January to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. We began planning and making some bookings. New Zealand is very close to Australia, but we had never been. It is known to be a truly beautiful country and we were excited about seeing it for ourselves. During retirement we would like to hire a motorhome and drive around New Zealand for a few months, but this trip was going to be a ten day visit, sticking solely to the North Island.

Poopsie and I have always talked to my brother and sister-in-law about travelling together. We have a lot in common and we all get along very well together. I love spending time with their son, my nephew and was thrilled in October when they welcomed a second son. Our “big” plan is to travel to Iceland with them, but they want to wait until their sons are a bit older before embarking on such a trip.

But a few weeks ago, we stopped by to see them on our way back to Canberra from a weekend in Newcastle. They asked us if we’d like to go to New Zealand with them next year, in either March or April. We immediately said yes!

We briefly contemplated still going in January but realised it was a much better decision to cancel our January trip and instead travel with them. Family is incredibly important to us so the opportunity to travel with my brother, sister-in-law and two nephews is something we are so excited about. We were able to cancel or change the dates of everything we’d booked, so there hasn’t been a financial impact. We may end up spending a little more, but then again we may not as we will share the costs of many things that we would have paid for ourselves (car hire, Airbnb accommodation etc.). As before, we are just sticking to the North Island and cannot wait.

The purpose for this post is to seek out any suggestions any of our readers may have for “must do” places or attractions on New Zealand’s North Island.

Have you been to New Zealand’s North Island? Share your suggestions of things to do below!