My Holidays: Kirk Penney

Kirk and Audra Penney in Santorini.

Kirk Penney stars for the New Zealand Breakers in the Australian NBL.

What was your greatest holiday? The first that springs to mind is Santorini in the Greek Islands. I went there with my wife and I thought it was just an awesome place, a bit of a romantic getaway. We went sailing had great food and it was just a pretty fun spot to be.

And the worst? The holiday is never good if you're going to a Caribbean Island or exotic place and it's raining the whole time.

What's the dumbest thing you've ever done when travelling? In international marriages, you have to have lined up all the visas and paperwork or exit flights. And I remember an early one when we got caught out. We were in Rome and we were trying to fly back to New Zealand in the middle of a Breakers season and my wife, being American, didn't have the required flight booked to leave New Zealand once we arrived. So we were just in the airport in Italy scrambling for about three hours, stressed out, and extremely exhausted.

What's your dream holiday destination?
I would love to do an safari in Zimbabwe or one of those countries. I think that is one thing that would be really cool just to do in your lifetime. You can't do it until your kids are 12 however, so I'm going to have to wait a little while on that.

Complete this sentence: I can't travel without ...
I used to think it was like Bose earphones or maybe a good iPad but now … it's snacks for the kids. Because if there aren't snacks for the kids on those long flights, it's trouble.

We just have an awesome assortment of snacks so that everyone's happy.

The one bonus of travelling used to be watching movies or maybe catching some sleep, where now its just stopping fights and trying not to be that family on the plane that everyone stares at. I love my girls, but my wife and I would definitely agree that we would prefer to travel when they're a little bit older.

When travelling with the team, the best thing to have is noise-cancelling headphones. It's just wonderful to be able to watch Netflix or different shows and just have some down time.

What's the best travel tip you've ever been given?
The biggest thing for me is just to really hydrate well. Obviously, I've gone to the States every year for 18 years and gone throughout Europe, so I've travelled a lot and I've come to understand the jetlag is for the most part dehydration. So if you can replace the fluids during the flights and right after it makes a huge difference for recovery.

What's the best thing you've brought back from a trip? I was living in Berlin and the season ended and we finished first in the regular season, so I went out and splurged and bought a really, really nice watch. And that's kind of my little memento from Berlin.

What's the next trip you've got planned? We would like to do a Queenstown trip in the near future. And then we will be doing a Stateside strip again to see Audra's family and on that trip we are always trying to throw in little side trips around the States.