Photos from New Zealand

January 18, 2016 • Leave a Comment

Once we got to New Zealand, I discovered that the Internet connection to the "outside world" was quite thin. The bandwidth to Zenfolio servers and to basically anywhere outside NZ was so poor, that it made no sense to upload photos or anything from NZ. A couple of Facebook posts every now and then was occationally possible. On the way back home we stopped at Hong Kong for a few days.

So only when I got back home to Finland, I was able to sort out the photos and upload them to Zenfolio. In total there are about 5000 picture and videos.

Daily photos are now here in this group, sorted by Country and then by each day:

http://photos.leiman.fi/nz-2015

And a small selection of pictures from NZ:

2015-12-20 Tokyo, 2nd day

December 20, 2015

We slept like logs, being so tiered from two days without proper sleep and the jet lag of +7 hour time zone difference. Only the alarm clock at 9 AM woke me up. The curtain was closed, so when I tried to open it to see outside, Minna got really upset for me putting on such a bright light. But that bright light was the sun :-)

We quickly went to have the hotel breakfast, which wasn't included in price, but could be had for a discounted price if you buy tickets from the reception.

First we went to see the Ueno district by subway. The park and the zoo, shrine north of the station. At the zoo we saw Panda and Polar bears.

Then the shopping streets south. Then we continued with the subway to Asakusa to see the Sensoji Kannon Temple. Then by subway to the Skytree building, the 2nd tallest in the world. Again we saw the city light from hih above, but this time it was from 250 meters, and you can see really far. The city is endless.

Then the last thing to see was the Harajuku fashion district, which required a 30 minute subway trip across the city. On the Harajuku main street and the Takeshita St. you can see all the latest fashions in clothing. Then it was time for a dinner and back to hotel. Next afternoon the journey continues...

Gallery from the entire 2nd day at Tokyo:

2015-12-19 First day at Tokyo

December 20, 2015

We left from Helsinki on the Finnair flight AY073 to Tokyo Narita. It was really busy to days before leaving, and for Minna it was especially hard, as she had to do a lot of work before leaving. Actually missing last night's sleep almost completely and fixing crashed IT systems to the very last minute before leaving to the airport.

Finally on the Friday (18th Dec 2015) afternoon we managed to get into the Finnair business lounge to start off the journey with glasses of sparkling wine.

The flight to Tokyo was uneventful. Being so tiered, we slept though most of it and arrived to Tokyo Narita at scheduled time on Saturday morning 9 AM local time. Luggage arrived promptly and we cleared immigration and customs quickly. Then we bought tickets to the Skyliner train with 2 days Tokyo subway. It wasn't immediately clear where to get the tickets, but by asking around it didn't take that much time. The tickets cost 5100 Yen per person, and the biggest surprise was that you could not by them with credit card, cash only. The Skyliner train was comfortable and took us to Ueno station in less than an hour. Outside it was sunny, 11 degrees. Then at Ueno station we took the subway Hibiya line to Akihibara, where I had reserved hotel Remm Akihibara from booking.com. We arrived just before noon, but the checkin time was actually 3 PM. But as a special favour, we got our room early without extra charge. The room was nice, modern and very clean, but also quite tiny. But we intended only sleep there, so good enough for our purposes. The location was very convenient, as it was quite easy to reach from the airport, but excellent for also going anywhere in the city by the subway.

On the first day we went to see the Ginza area, then Roppongi district, and finally see the night views of the city from the Tokyo tower. Then back to hotel for a dinner at a Korean restaurant and a long overdue overnight sleep.

Here is the complete gallery of the 1st day pictures:

Maledives 2009, scuba diving safari

December 05, 2015

I was inspired by an upcoming scuba diving trip to Maledives, and decided to finally update the pictures and videos from my previous trip I did back in 2009. From that trip in 2009 I only had a small selection of low resolution pictures at this site.

Now I finally managed to upload everything here in original quality. There are over 4000 pictures, which take up 12 Gbytes of storage, and it took half a day to upload them all.

The safari was done early February 2009. There is a Finnish language trip report at my scuba blog at:
http://sukellus.leiman.fi/sukellus/malediivit-2009/

All of the material is now at this group page.

Well, almost. The videos still need editing...

New Zealand 2015-2016

December 01, 2015

Me and my Minna will be spending our xmas holidays of 2015/16 by traveling to New Zealand. This will be a 3 week trip, where we first have a 2 night layover in Tokyo, and then we drive around the islands of New Zealand for 2 weeks, and finally on the way back to Finland we have a 3 night layover in Hong Kong. Layovers make the flights a little more bearable, as they are 10 to 11 hour flight segements, and doing two of those back to back really hurts my back.

Below picture shows the global flight plan, staring 18 Dec 2015, ending 9 Jan 2016. The date notation is of the forform DD.MM.YYYY, which we use in Finland.

The main attraction of the trip is touring New Zealand. First we spend a few day on North Island visiting some relatives. Then we fly to South Island, drive around the NZ Southern Alps, take the Interislander ferry back to North Island. THe route can be seen in the picture below.

NZ route 22 Dec 2015 to 5 Jan 2016