Cinque Terra. Photo / Getty Images
Elisabeth Easther talks to the General Manager - NZ Coachlines at InterCity Groups.
When I was a wee boy I spent some time living in the United Kingdom. Dad ran Contiki Travel in Europe which meant we visited all the Contiki vacation destinations. For family holidays we did everything from skiing in Austria to lying on a beach in the Greek islands. On one of our holidays, our family — mum dad and three kids — had a French chateau all to ourselves for four nights; the Chateau de Cruix in the Beaujolais wine region near Lyon. We took our mattresses and put them in the corner of the grand ballroom and ate our cornflakes looking over the grapevines. It was a charmed childhood.
When I was a schoolboy I spent three months in Germany. My German host family lived in Duisburg, not far from Cologne. I was 16 at the time, and on my first day I was probably nervous and overwhelmed after flying for 24 hours. When I landed at Frankfurt airport, I forgot every single piece of vocabulary I'd ever learnt and for the first 24 hours the only words I could say were "yes" and "no". My host family must've thought "what on earth have we got here?" But they were very kind and very quickly I started to pick up what people were saying and by the end of my stay I was pretty near fluent.
I've always felt I could have been Italian in another life. I love all of Italy. Back in 2007, I walked the Cinque Terra, the five villages along the Italian Riviera coastline joined together by hiking trails. I went with Alice who was my fiancee and is now my wife. We based ourselves in a little village called Levanto where you can take a train to any of the five villages and walk a section of the trail.
We stayed at a picturesque stone cottage called Lobster Cottage that had tomato vines growing outside our bedroom door. We'd walk the tracks during the day then in the evenings we'd eat pasta and drink Italian Chianti. One night we went to dinner at a restaurant converted from an old boatshed run by a husband (the waiter) and wife (the chef). I asked the waiter for the wine list and he said, "Wine list? No. I am the wine list!"
I've been to India three times, and have found the taxi and bus drivers just amazing in that part of the world. How do they know what every other car on the road is doing? You're sitting looking out the window and all these vehicles are missing you by millimetres, yet everyone seems to get to where they're going, safely. One of the highlights of those trips is meeting the travel agents we deal with. Indians are such generous, hospitable people. They're friendly and very curious about New Zealand and I love telling them how great our country is.
Our kids are 8 and 5, and family vacations have mainly been to Australia and the islands although last year we took the kids to the US to visit Disneyland and Legoland. I'd been to Disneyland when I was 9, and I was wondering, what would it be like for me as an adult? And I was so impressed. Disneyland is hugely busy — heaving — but it's such a great place for young and old.
We spent five days at Disneyland and three at Legoland, and after that we were ready to flop on a beach, so on the way home we stopped in Rarotonga. We loved it there so much, when we got home the very next week we booked back into same room at the same hotel in the same month to do it all over again. My daughter, the 5-year-old, wants to know if her same friend is going to be in the kids' club — sadly we can't arrange that.
Because my wife's family is from Tauranga, we spend a lot of time in the Bay of Plenty.
One of my favourite things to do on New Year's Day is climb to the top of Mt Maunganui and watch the first sunrise of the New Year. I've done that four or five times now, and there are always a few people up there. A few tourists, a few people who have stayed up all night and are looking a bit bleary eyed but seeing that golden glow come up over the horizon, I love that.
I've only ever worked in tourism, having started out cleaning campervans when I was still at school. To me, tourism is all about helping people create happy memories and I think that's what I love about it.
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