by shanemcd | June 17, 2015 | Featured, General Travel | 0 Comments

One of the most stressful things you have to do before you even get into the car to head to the airport, is packing for your holiday or vacation. This handy list might help you before you start packing and it might help you ensure that you don’t leave home...

by shanemcd | May 7, 2015 | Featured, Hotel Reviews | 0 Comments

Every year I head to London with Friends and have done so for the past few years, with 2015 being the 5th year. Initially we stayed in budget hotels and quickly found that for a few extra pound per night we could stay in a very nice and comfortable hotel. In 2014 we...

by shanemcd | March 2, 2015 | Featured, Hotel Reviews | 0 Comments

This is a B&B review of the Hampton’s luxury B&B in Kaikoura, New Zealand Kaikoura was the first stop after visiting the very friendly city of Christchurch. We spotted The Hampton’s Kaikoura on the Booking.com app which is one of my first-calls...

by shanemcd | March 1, 2015 | Featured, Hotel Reviews | 0 Comments

Hotel on Davenport was booked as our 2nd last stop in New Zealand. The area around Tauranga is wonderful and we should have spent a bit more time here and also around Mount Maunganui which is very scenic. We arrived at Hotel on Davenport around 4pm on a Saturday. The...

by shanemcd | February 27, 2015 | Featured, Hotel Reviews | 0 Comments

If you intend visiting Gisborne when in New Zealand then I highly recommend La Frontiere, a luxurious modern self-contained studio, set on an avocado orchard and farmland, and is about 5 mins drive to Gisborne city centre. This was one accommodation which we were very...

by shanemcd | November 11, 2014 | City Guides, Featured | 0 Comments

Christchurch, New Zealand has had it’s share of troubles in the past few years. The last time we were here was 2011 after Two large earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks resulted in much of the city having to be demolished. At the time we were not able to...

by shanemcd | November 7, 2014 | Featured, Hotel Reviews | 0 Comments

Having flown 12 hours from Hong Kong to Sydney in business class with Cathay Pacific, we arrived at Sydney airport for an unavoidable 8 hour layover before flying to Christchurch. Unfortunately our flight was delayed by about 90 minutes and we didn’t arrive in...

by shanemcd | August 3, 2014 | Air Travel, Featured | 0 Comments

In a previous post I mentioned how great Cathay’s Premium Economy was during our flight from London to Hong Kong. It was my intention that I would review the Hong Kong to Sydney leg. On arrival at gate 71 in HKG our tickets were very unexpectedly upgraded to...

by shanemcd | July 24, 2014 | Featured, Hotel Reviews | 0 Comments

The Novotel Century Hong Kong is a hotel we stayed in back in 2010 en-route to New Zealand. We decided to return in 2014 based on our past stay there. After a speedy and helpful checkin we went to the room to drop the bags. The accommodation was a very nice large room...

by shanemcd | June 1, 2014 | Featured, Hotel Reviews | 0 Comments

There seems to be a Joe Bonamassa theme about some of our hotel visits and this one is another. This time we were going to the Paris concert in April 2012 and booked the Hôtel Élysées-Mermoz based on good Booking.com scores and also just a 15-20 minutes to the venue,...