Later this year, I am travelling to Peru, where I hope to cross another item off my bucket list: hiking the Inca Trail and visiting Machu Picchu. I'm really excited about the trip, which will be my first time in South America, and I couldn't help but look back on some of the other amazing travel experiences I've been lucky enough to have over the past few years. I hope some of these will inspire you with your own holiday planning for 2018 and beyond.

2017 has been my busiest ever year for travel. I spent 84 days outside the UK on 12 foreign trips, some for business but most for pleasure. 30 of these days were spent on a sabbatical in Australia and New Zealand. I visited five new countries and ten countries in total: the Czech Republic (Prague); France (Paris and Cannes); Germany (Cologne); Italy (Padua); Norway (Oslo); Spain (Barcelona); the United States (New York, Boston, Cape Ann and Maine); Singapore; Australia; and New Zealand.

2017 has been a particularly fine year for coffee, food and cocktails for me, partly because I've travelled to diverse destinations with copious coffee and culinary delights. Remind me not to work on next year's list on an empty stomach: reviewing so many food and drink photos gave me quite the appetite!

I've only been back from my month-long trip to Australia and New Zealand for ten days and I'm already missing both countries. I blogged on the road about the places I visited — Australia here and New Zealand here — and have posted some of my favourite photos on Flickr — Australia here and New Zealand here — but I also wanted to report back on my overall itinerary: where I stayed, how I got there and how I spent my time. I had 28 full days so this is a very long article and you may wish to make a cup of coffee before you dive in.

After the specialty coffee free-for-all that was my trip to Melbourne, I had about a week to recover before arriving in Sydney. My coffee to-do list was shorter for Sydney than for Melbourne and I also had more time — five full days, as it turned out — but I was staying with friends who are as into their coffee as I am, which meant that my list ended up growing considerably. 

Sydney has been on my travel to-do list for as long as I can remember and it was always going to feature prominently in my Australian itinerary. I had planned to spend five nights (four-and-a-half days) in the city, but Qantas had other ideas. They cancelled my flight to Auckland on Monday morning and rebooked me on a much later one. Although I wasn’t exactly unhappy to have more time in Sydney, it was unfortunate that I then lost half a day from my much briefer stay in Auckland.

Of all the places on my Australia and New Zealand itinerary, Byron Bay was the one I was considering dropping if I felt I was being over-ambitious. It wasn't that I didn't want to visit but one of the main reasons for going there is the wonderful beach with sand so soft it squeaks between your toes and world-class surfing. I've been to great beaches before, though, and they don't have the uniqueness of Melbourne's coffee scene, for example, or the Great Barrier Reef, the Daintree Rainforest, or of Sydney.

From sunny Melbourne, I flew to tropical North Queensland to enjoy some R and R. In this part of the world, that means ‘reef and rainforest’, although I also got a large amount of a third R: rain. Travelling to various Antipodean locations in one trip makes it hard to find the perfect time of year weather-wise for them all. The wet season in Queensland (as opposed to the slightly-less-wet season) isn’t supposed to start until the end of November, so I thought I might be OK.

One of the main reasons I wanted to visit Melbourne was to explore the city’s extensive and diverse specialty coffee scene. Italian-style espresso coffee and espresso-bar culture first reached the city in the 1950s, although took another couple of decades to take off. Now, almost every block in the CBD has at least one specialty coffee shop and there are numerous roasters and micro-roasters based in the city.

After two pleasant overnight flights with Singapore Airlines, I touched down at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport just after 7:20 am on Sunday and, thanks to the electronic immigration stations (alas, no passport stamp for me) and a speedy SkyBus journey, I arrived at my hotel just after 8:15 am. This was too early to check in, but just the right time to head off in search of jet lag-busting coffee and breakfast. I slept pretty well on both flights and was more than ready to start exploring. 

I'm off travelling again today. Regular readers will know that this is hardly news for me; I tend to take one or two foreign trips each month. This one is special, however. I will be away for a whole month, which is the longest I've been able to take off work at one time since I started my career in publishing 11 years ago. I decided to take advantage of my company's sabbatical policy to book in a four-week trip to Australia and New Zealand, both of which have been on my travel to-do list for over 15 years.

I've been planning (and saving!) hard since January and booked my flights from and to London back in April, nailing down the rest of my itinerary over the summer. As always, I found the Lonely Planet guidebooks an invaluable resource. I used their 2015 Australia guide (there is a new edition coming out next month) and their 2016 New Zealand North Island guide, knowing that I would be focusing most of my attention on this part of the country on this trip.


A note on my itinerary and my decision to visit both countries in four weeks: I know that it isn't possible to 'do' either country (or even a small part of Australia) in one month, but I also don't know when I will next get the opportunity to visit this part of the world — after all, it took me almost 34 years to schedule my first trip — and I wanted to have a taster for both countries. Moreover, for me, one of the best parts of travelling is that sense of excitement and wonder I get when I first arrive in a new city. I love revisiting favourite destinations, but I'll never tire of the thrill of discovery.

Excluding my international flights, I have 28 full days and am splitting this time about evenly between the east coast of Australia and New Zealand's North Island. Rather than taking the hefty Lonely Planet Australia guide, I was planning to buy a copy of the more portable East Coast Australia guide; the new edition isn't out until next month, however, and I am very grateful to Lonely Planet who provided me with a review copy, which will be a major point of reference during the first half of my trip.

I have a packed itinerary, which includes several cities, the Great Barrier Reef, some beach time and a road trip around New Zealand's North Island. Being me, a key focus will be speciality coffee. I already have an unfeasibly large coffee to-do list for both Melbourne (my first stop) and Sydney, but to help me sift through the many possibilities, I would really welcome any recommendations — please let me know in the comments or on Twitter (non-coffee-related suggestions are also welcome!). I'm also on the look-out for coffee (and other) tips for Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand.


As usual, I am packing light: I am taking my Rimowa Salsa Air carry-on suitcase (frustratingly, most of my internal flights have a 7kg carry-on limit, which will mean checking my case), my TUMI Halle Backpack and, as a handbag, my purple small Longchamp Le Pliage tote. During the Antipodean late spring, the weather is likely to range from warm to hot (by British standards, anyway), and I'm taking four dresses, two pairs of shorts, one pair of jeans, enough tops and underwear for ten days, three sweaters, my Uniqlo ultralight down jacket, running kit, two bikinis, a pair of running shoes, sandals, flip flops and ballet pumps. Technology-wise, I'm taking my MacBook Air and Kindle, and decided to downsize my camera kit and take just my compact camera (I bought the Canon Powershot G7X Mark II a few months ago, and I've been really happy with it) and my Nikon waterproof camera.


I won't have room to bring much coffee home, but I'm taking my trusty Aeropress with me so I can brew some fine Antipodean coffee while I'm there. I'm also delighted to report that the Made by Knock Aergrind, which I backed on KickStarter some months ago, arrived just in the knick of time and will be coming with me. Alas, it didn't come with any instructions, so I'll have to re-read Brian's great review on the Coffee Spot.

This month is partly about giving myself a break from my hectic day job in the busy press office of a major scientific journal, but while I'm away, as a minimum, I am planning to produce one post about each destination I visit and one speciality coffee update for each relevant city.