Photos, Superlatives, and Stats!

We are pleased to announce that all our trip photos are now available online. You can see them at the following link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zudnic/collections/

Way back when, we promised some superlatives. Here they are.

Hotels Etc.

• Best Meal: We splurged on a high-end meal at the Victoria & Albert Waterfront in Cape Town.
• Worst Meal: Something that appeared to approximate Kraft Mac & Cheese that we made in Kaikoura, New Zealand.
• Best Hotel: Tie, Park Plaza, Beijing; Cradog B&B, Ireland
• Worst Hotel: Cactus Jack's, Rotorua, New Zealand - cold and grungy.
• Best Bed: Cradog B&B, Ireland
• Worst Bed: Our first hotel in Xi'an, China. The Chinese for some reason insist on rock-hard beds, and this was the worst.
• Best Bathroom: Park Plaza, Beijing
• Worst Bathroom: Jolly Boys Backpackers, Zambia - someone needs to tell these folks that shower curtains need to be changed at least once a year. And some hot water would be nice too.
  
• Best Breakfast: tie, Hotel Rugenpark, Interlaken, Switzerland; City Lodge, Johannesburg, South Africa. Both these places had wide variety of breakfast foods, attractively laid out.
• Worst Breakfast: Il Fiori Napoli, Naples - at an otherwise very nice B&B, breakfast here is coffee and a croissant they may or may not feel like heating up in the microwave.
• Wierdest Hotel Room Feature: The ceiling-mounted heating element at our hostel in Launceston, Tasmania. Heat rises, people.
  

People and Experiences

• Best Locals: South Africa. The nicest people in the world, we swear. At Kruger National Park, they volunteered to teach us the local way of barbecue, braai. When we visited other parts of the country, including very poor areas, we encountered nothing but wonderful people.
• Worst Locals: China. People are unwilling to help clueless foreigners, not to mention the spitting.
• Most Overrated: Italy. It's not that pretty (except Capri) and the people there are very rude. We left a bit bewildered why so many people rave about it.
  
• Most Underrated: South Africa. Such a wonderful country, beautiful countryside, spectacular animals, and the aforementioned locals.
• Best Trains: Austria - leather seats and waiter service.
• Worst Trains: China. People spitting on the floor, grimy walls, and no space.
• Best Flight: Tough to say, but generally flights on Cathay Pacific and Qantas had the best food and service. Qantas had by far the best inflight entertainment.
• Worst Flight: The one that was made the worst by the Airline was from Krakow to Dublin, departing at 6:00 AM, the flight attendant wouldn't allow passengers to spread out to empty seats. Madrid to Cairo had the worst time, departing at 12:30 AM and arriving at 3:30 AM. Also our JetStar flight from Melbourne to Hobart, Australia, was delayed by 3.5 hours.
• Best Airport: The quick, easy ones that weren't under construction, had decent food options, didn't gouge you on departure taxes. These included Queenstown, New Zealand; Cairns, Australia; and Krakow, Poland.
  
• Worst Airport: Livingstone, Zambia. Four flights departed around the same time - and the check-in room is about the size of your average Starbucks.
  
• Most Chaotic City: Tie, Naples, Italy and Cairo, Egypt. Cairo doesn't even have traffic lights. And in Naples, Vespa scooters follow no rules and are everywhere. Cairo:
• Most Relaxing City: Kaikoura, New Zealand - at the foot of the mountains, but on the ocean, Kaikoura is as beautiful a town as you will ever see.
• Most Peaceful Spot: Cradog B&B, Freshford, Ireland. Satellite TV, rolling hills, and two friendly dogs.
  
• Scariest Place: Johannesburg, South Africa - the crime rate here is out of control.
  
• Best City for Eating: Bangkok. Everything is wonderful and cheap.
• Worst City for Eating: Yichang, China. Very few restaurants, we had to eat at our hotel, which was pretty abysmal.
• Best Surprise - Capri Island, Italy. We went there on a whim, after missing a ferry to Positano. Capri is nothing short of stunningly beautiful. Who cares that it's a tourist trap?
• Biggest Disappointment - Madrid. For a major European capital, it's pretty boring.
• Best One-Day Activity - Swimming with dolphins in Kaikoura, New Zealand; diving the Great Barrier Reef, Australia.
  
• Prettiest City: You can't beat Cape Town's stunning location, and the cliff-clinging towns of Italy's Cinque Terre region are postcard-perfect.
• Ugliest City: Yichang, China.
• Happiest Moment: Watching four lionesses attempt to make dinner out of a herd of giraffes; reaching the top of the Devil's Ladder while climbing New Zealand's Tongariro Crossing.
• Scariest Moment: When we took the "scam bus" from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia, the bus stopped 5 km from the border and the driver demanded our passports for "express visa service" - then sped away with them on a moped. We got them back, thankfully.
• Best Find: Just north of Kaikoura, New Zealand, we found an isolated pool at the foot of a waterfall, where we found dozens of baby seals playing.
• Coolest Nature Experience: The aforementioned lion strike, plus seeing the world's rarest species of penguin lumber out of the water and back to her nest for the night in New Zealand.
• Most Interesting People We Met: Jim and Sheri, who are driving their Land Cruiser around the world for five years, through some pretty godforsaken places. Their website is worth a read.
• Most Rustic Country: Cambodia by a long shot. A gas station:
• Most Eye-Opening Experience: Driving through rural Cambodia and seeing the crushing poverty; Sam's Cultural Tour in Cape Town, where we got to visit the townships.
• Lowest Moment: Duct-taping together a ripped plastic shopping bag because we needed it and we were out of spares.

You might also be interested to hear the list of things that were confiscated by airline personnel in various places around the globe: duct tape, cans of tuna fish, re-usable ice bricks, mustard. All of these things are serious security risks, obviously.

Also, in one of our first blog posts, we listed some stats on the trip. After actually going, the numbers have been revised.

• 44,521 49,420 flight miles
• Five continents and at least nine 21 countries (including the Vatican)
• 17 24 airports
• Five Nine airlines (American, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, JetStar, Hainan, Air China, Comair (South Africa), British Airways, Iberia)
  
• This is a map of all our flights:
• If you're interested, these are all the airports: Boston, USA (BOS); Los Angeles, USA (LAX); Auckland, NZ (AKL); Queenstown, NZ (ZQN); Melbourne, Australia (MEL); Hobart, Australia (HBA); Cairns, Australia (CNS); Ayers Rock, Australia (AYQ); Sydney, Australia (SYD); Bangkok, Thailand (BKK); Siem Reap, Cambodia (REP); Hong Kong, Hong Kong (HKG); Beijing (Peking), China (PEK); Xi'an (Xian), China (XIY); Yichang, China (YIH); Johannesburg, South Africa (JNB); Cape Town, South Africa (CPT); Nelspruit, South Africa (MQP); Livingstone, Zambia (LVI); London - Heathrow, UK (LHR); Cairo, Egypt (CAI); Madrid, Spain (MAD); Kraków, Poland (KRK); Dublin, Ireland (DUB).