I'm sitting here in Sydney, overlooking the bay from my friend George's 10th floor flat. It's glorious. He has one of the most fabulous views I've ever seen, including a bird's eye peek into Nicole Kidman's house. She lives right across the street and there always seems to be a fan sitting out front awaiting a sighting. There’s also a large van with a solar panel of some sort on top guarding the place. George pointed out the bushes in the front of his building that got trampled from the poparattzi that camped out there during her wedding time. He said that the woman in charge of his building would turn on the sprinklers when she saw the press hiding in the shrubs. 

 

I left LAX on Easter night and flew into Auckland. I left on the 8th and arrived on the 10th, totally missing out on April 9th this year. I had two days in the land of the kiwi to adjust to jetlag and see the green sites of the north island of New Zealand. It truly is lush green and relatively unspoiled once you get out of the Auckland area. The skies were so brilliantly blue and the land so many lush greens - such a contrast to the smoggy gray cast of so cal. I went on a day tour to Rotorua and was amazed at how far we drove without passing thru a town of any size. I saw tons of cows and a few sheep - but not nearly as many sheep as I would expect. Beef is a big industry in this area and I loved the signs in the small towns that offered "HOME KILL." Louie the tour guide didn't see the humor but then he's not from LA. We stopped in a town called Matamata, aka Hobbitton as they filmed much of the Hobbit movies there. Rotorua offers a Maori cultural center and thermal activity much like Yellowstone Park in the US. Then we went to the Waitomo Caves that feature zillions of glowworms. The Scottish nursing student from Glasgow, who was the only other person in my tour van, was extremely disappointed to find out that, contrary to the glowworm night-light she had as a child, the glow comes from the tail and not the head of the worm. This seemed to present quite a turning point in her life.

 

In Auckland I toured the city and found the downtown area to be rather quaint and manageable. It is built on seven extinct volcanoes and is the largest city in NZ. One out of every four (of 1.4 million) New Zealanders lives in Auckland. They are really into homeopathic medicine and I had lots of fun exploring the all the offerings and skin products at the various CHEMISTS (Louie the tour guide took great offense when I called them drug stores.) I saw the city from the top of Mt. Eden, one the extinct volcanoes, that offers 360 degree views. The crater was very gassy and full of cows and a few errant tourists. I was impressed with how much of the Maori culture is present in the country, especially in the ads, the names of places, its art and architecture. Even the morning television shows offered modern Maori music that struck me as Maori gone rap.

 

Thursday I flew here to Sydney and have been taken well care of by George and Jean Pierre (my hosts) and my friend Faina who I met in Vietnam in November. Yesterday Faina took me around Sydney and to the Opera House. She's a retired violinist from the Sydney Symphony and the Opera Orchestra but still teaches violin about 35 hours a week. She and her husband emigrated here from Moscow in 1978. She took me to Bondi Beach (right in the middle of Sydney) and showed me the apartment where they first lived when they arrived here. Her husband has created a youth orchestra here (SBS Youth Orchestra) that will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year. We saw huge poster advertising the Handle program they are performing at the Opera House next month.

 

Here’s a photo of me at Rainbow Springs Nature Park in Rotorua, NZ. I'm learning about the Moa who have been extinct for 400 years. The other photo at the top of this page is an exclusive photo of me, on George's balcony, pointing out Nicole Kidman's house.