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.