American In Paris, An - New Zealand Symphony Orchestra/James Judd

Advantages: Beautiful city
Disadvantages: Not very Kiwi

...Christchurch is in the Canterbury region of New Zealand's South Island and is the largest city on this island. Like the North Island's Auckland, it is a key arrival point and hub for international travellers. Christchurch is situated close to the East coast and to the West lie the immense flat sweeps of the Canterbury plains. These vast plains feel flat, even to me, a native of East Anglia. Their main use is farmland and they require regular wind blocks of tall fences of trees to stop the topsoil from blowing away. Named by the after Oxford's Christ Church (a college that one of the Canterbury Association went to), it was a colony sponsored by the Church of England about 150 years ago. Even today, the city centre has an extremely British in feel to it and even has a river Avon upon which you can go punting!The centre itself has... Read review

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Advantages: Friendly, good luggage allowance, friendly staff
Disadvantages: More expensive than many

...Air New Zealand are towards the upmarket end of the non-luxury airlines. Reliable and professional, they aren't by any means the cheapest, but the Economy class is comfortable, the service excellent and gets you where you need to go. Book well in advance for the cheapest fares - if you decide to go at the last minute like we did, it's pricy (around 1700 pounds if you book 2 weeks before you go). When I went to New Zealand in April 2009, I flew economy class with Air New Zealand. Our route took us from Heathrow to Auckland via Hong Kong, with the return journey starting in Queenstown and a stopover in Los Angeles. My first encounter with the staff was at the checkin desk in Heathrow. The staff there were polite and friendly. They had an additional member of staff in the queue verifying that we all knew about the new requirements... Read review

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Advantages: Somewhere very diiferent, Maori culture, boiling mud and geysers
Disadvantages: the smell was a little off putting, Maori evening was awful

...ROTORUA: Rotorua is on the North island of New Zealand almost in the middle about three hours drive from Auckland and six from Wellington. We stayed at the Sudima Hotel right beside Lake Rotorua and as we got off the bus the interesting sulphur smell of Rotorua greeted us. It is quite a strong rotten egg sort of smell that gets in to everywhere. I didn?t find it too revolting but others in our group found it very over powering and complained constantly that it even pervaded the air-conditioning in the rooms. The town is quite small enough to walk around the main sights, the lovely steaming lake and the park alongside it and all the way to Ohinemutu. On our first evening we went to the Tamika Maori evening ( see separate review on this one) TE PUIA ? THE NEW ZEALAND MAORI ARTS AND CRAFTS INSTIRUTE: The next day we were up... Read review

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