For as long as we’ve been planning our current trip we knew we’d only have time for the most cursory of experiences of each place. Driving through New Zealand is a great way to see the country, but it’s also a good way to get a sense of how much you’re missing. In the end it was good that we hadn’t planned to go further south than Christchurch as the far south was largely blocked off by snow, but we now know we very much want to go there eventually.

So we knew it would be hard to leave, but we had no idea that it would actually be so complicated. First, at checkin we were told that all the advice we had received was wrong and that we needed visas to enter Australia. As far as we can tell that’s only the case if flying from New Zealand, and thankfully the airline was able to furnish us with them, though the ‘free’ visas actually came in at $60 thanks to ’service fees.’

We also discovered that the airlines, despite including airport taxes in the ticket prices, hadn’t been passing that money along to the airports so the New Zealand airports are now charging passengers $25 a piece in order to depart. That sounds rather like fraud to me—I’ll definitely be following up to find out if we were double-charged.

After all of that we found Emirates a significant improvement on Air New Zealand, and the food was definitely above par. And now we’re in Australia, preparing to head out to Hunter Valley for a little more wine tasting.

Blogging while travelling isn’t proving nearly as frequent an event as I’d expected. Too much to see and do, and too few hotels/hostels with good internet access. For regular updates it’s probably better to keep an eye on my flickr stream than this blog, but I’ll try to keep this place up to date.

We’re currently in New Zealand, staying with the wonderful Riddells in Cambridge, a couple of hours south of Auckland. I’ll write more on New Zealand when we’ve been here longer, but first step back to California with a couple of highlights.

The thing I most appreciated about Petaluma, California is that the traffic seemed to always stop for pedestrians. We wondered if there’s a city ordinance about it. I’ve been very struck over the past few years by the degree to which US laws and road practices privilege cars over people, and it was wonderful to be in a town which seemed to have flipped that around.

The highlights of San Francisco were mostly culinary. Between Tartine Bakery, Farmer Brown and a number of other wonderful cafes and restaurants we seemed to spend most of our time eating or drinking, which was a great way to see the city. Kari’s going to have more notes and photos on that up on her blog soon, so I’ll link to that when it’s ready.

As of 1pm Eastern time yesterday, we’re homeless.

Having agreed the sale of our house in March and completed the process three weeks ago, yesterday we packed up, cleaned up, and drove away in a bright yellow van (not the one pictured).

This is of course a chosen homelessness, and we have plenty of places to stay and support structures to rest on. This weekend we’re in Chicago with Kari’s family. Tomorrow we fly to California, and from there to New Zealand, Australia, and on into Asia.

The movers are downstairs, gradually emptying our house, and we can finally begin to emerge from the task-oriented tunnel vision that has been a necessary part of the past fortnight. As more and more people asked me whether I was excited about the trip that will fill our next two months, I’ve generally had to answer that I was trying not to think about it other than logistically. There was too much to do to allow such distractions.

Now that the house is nearly empty we can begin to anticipate it without reservation.

When I have been excited, it’s largely been thanks to the Lonely Planet citiescape guides, a series of portraits of cities that can be easily read in half an hour or so.

By trying to communicate the mood, rhythm and pace of cities rather than cram in every details of every museum, they build anticipation without being overwhelming, and hopefully give some sense of how to ‘be’ in those cities rather than how to ’see’ them. The portraits probably aren’t sufficiently nuanced, and caricature their subjects, but in 100 short pages there’s not much else that can be done, and for me they’ve been a great way to prepare.