by Steph Hodge

Hey Friends!

Maybe you missed me, but I was sailing away on the BGG@Sea cruise from Sydney, Australia, all around New Zealand.

I first want to give a shout-out to [user=CaptainQwyx][/user] for hosting such a fabulous event. For those unfamiliar, BGG@Sea has 2 cruises each year. One abroad and one stateside. Check out the details for Jeff’s upcoming cruises!

There is a lot to unpack here because traveling to the otherside of the world is a bucket-list sort of adventure. Michael and I decided to join this cruise SUPERRRRRRRRRR last minute because it’s a big investment. However, we had both been on the BGG@Sea Alaskan Cruise back in 2018 and had a blast. We decided to make this trip work because it is a trip of a lifetime.

I will be the first to tell you that a 13+ hour-long flight does not excite me. I was not looking forward to all of the travel to make it happen, but New Zealand!! Home of Hobbits! A destination I knew I had to visit at least once.

Now, the cruise did offer an excursion to Hobbiton, but by the time we decided to join the group, it was already sold out. It meant that we had to plan to visit New Zealand before or after the cruise itself to make sure we got to actually go to Hobbiton. Thanks to Jeff, he was able to create a private tour for those who wanted to join before the cruise. There were 23 of us geeks who wanted to visit Hobbiton!! It was an EPIC adventure because we got the ALL IN BUNDLE. A full feast and behind-the-scenes tour included.

Because the cruise was sailing from Sydney, Australia, it meant we had to fly into Auckland, New Zealand, to visit Hobbiton and then make our way to Sydney the following day. It was all well worth it because Auckland wasn’t even on the itinerary for our cruise around New Zealand. We got to visit an extra city, but more importantly, we got to visit Hobbiton. A major reason to visit New Zealand anyway!

To be fair, New Zealand is a wonderful place all on its own. You don’t need Hobbiton to make it a magical trip, but it is like the icing on the cake.

After a VERY long travel day from BNA to LAX to AUK, we completely lost a day in transit, but arrived bright and early in Auckland. We were immediately greeted by [user=JediLuke] Luke Badger[/user] of Badgers from Mars! If you are not familiar with their game Regicide, I highly recommend it! Michael and I were SO FORTUNATE that he was available to show us the scenes of Auckland. I feel like we got an insider tour of all the best New Zealand offerings. He brought us around to see the sights, but more importantly, to try a variety of foods like the savory pies, delicious gelato, marmite (which is not like Vegemite), and stopped at the food store to grab a bunch of New Zealand treats like Whittaker’s Chocolate. 😍

The following day, we were up bright and early to join the tour as we made our way to Hobbiton. It was a few hours by bus. The weather was saying rain and thunderstorms all day. I was super bummed by the forecast, so I just had to hope it would be incorrect. Again, we were incredibly lucky to have the rain hold off until the majority of the tour was completed. Super thankful for that. Going to Hobbiton, I KNEW I needed a Hobbit cloak, so Michael and I found a great deal on Amazon and purchased our cloaks. I expected EVERYONE to have cloaks when we got to Hobbiton, but turns out we were the geekiest of all. Some were jealous for sure! Obviously, the gift shop should be selling cloaks.

When you arrive at Hobbiton, you are at the gift shop and cafe. From there, the studio will take busloads of people during their slotted time. We were a bit special as we paid extra to have a luxury experience with the feast and behind-the-scenes tour. We also got to go inside a hobbit home. We were told that about 2200-2500 people visit daily, and they host an average of 2 weddings a week. I will be honest, I didn’t listen to the tour guide all that much. I was too busy being in the moment and taking a million photos. As a photographer, I just wanted to get the right shot, and that often means waiting until everyone leaves the area or running ahead before everyone shows up. I hope you enjoy some of my photography. The entire set is set up to give the perspective of Hobbit vs Humans in size. You can see that perspective from the photo of me in the door and Michael outside.

[imageid=9457317 medium rep]

Once we walked through Hobbiton, we ended at The Green Dragon, where we were given a free drink. We had only a little bit of time before we were escorted to the Watermill for our feast. But, Michael and I still tried to get in a game of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game. Once we were at the mill, we gazed upon 4 spreads of food for 23 people. It was FAR FAR FAR too much food. I think 2 spreads would have covered us all. Everyone was sad that there were no doggie bags to go! We learned that all the leftovers are fed to the pigs down the road. Those pigs are quite well fed, wow!

We saw some extra Hobbit holes and then moved along to the behind-the-scenes tour. You see the workspaces of actual on-site workers who are mending and making set pieces. You see a ton of concept artwork and the model for the Hobbit home. It is SO COOL!

As you can tell, this was a major highlight of my trip! We haven’t even made it to the cruise portion of the adventure! The day after Hobbiton was a travel day where most of us flew to Sydney and explored. Michael and I didn’t do much planning for what to see, but we knew we wanted to use the public transit. The trains are super convenient to use as you just tap your credit card to enter and exit. Same thing when using the tranis in New Zealand. They make it so easy!

We were able to easily get around and walk the streets of Sydney. It reminded me of New York City quite a bit. I am glad we went to see the Opera House at dusk. We got some great photos and then didn’t have to rush around the next day to see the touristy sights. On the day we set to embark, Royal Caribbean really makes it easy. You can drop your luggage off, and it will be delivered to your room. It made it so we didn’t have to wheel around luggage while we waited to board the ship. We could instead just explore more of Sydney. I opted to try the Pancake House for lunch. Delicious. There is a whole area by the ship called The Rocks with little marketplaces and shops. It was super cute. We explored there, but found access to the harbor bridge and walked across it! I highly recommend the walk. It took us to Luna Park, which is an old school amusement park. We missed the Squid Game experience, but they still had remaining features. 😂 Oh, how I would have loved to experience that! From there, we were easily able to take the ferry boat (tap on and off!) back to the port where the ship was waiting. It was excellent.

All in all, I didn’t get a lot of time to explore Australia, so maybe we will just have to come back.

YAY! The Cruise!! We board the ship and find our cabin. But, soon after, we sought out the conference area. Bring on the games! It is a great location as you can see out the back of the ship. You can tell by a few photos that we had an excellent view of Sydney Harbor.

There are a lot of cool aspects of BGG@Sea. You have access to a bunch of great games, and you meet a lot of fabulous people. Since we were leaving from Australia, we had a bunch of Australian attendees, which was awesome, since they don’t generally come to BGG.CON or other US conventions. Attendees will get to select 2 games for the library. There were about 140 of us, so about 200 games were brought. Since you only get two choices, a lot of the choices were bigger games. Thankfully, there was a pile of games that others brought that we could play as well. It was a good mix of games! Michael and I tried to learn at least one big game a day!

The cruise offers a wide variety of entertainment throughout the trip. The itinerary worked out so that there were 3 days at sea, followed by 5 port days, followed by 3 days at sea back to Sydney. Those days at sea are simply great for playing the big games! I got to playing a bunch of great games. I will highlight more at the end of the blog, but I will point out that on the 3rd day when we were sailing through the sounds of New Zealand, we got to learn and play Great Western Trail: New Zealand. That was super special and a fantastic game to play while sailing through the sounds. It was glorious!

So we had 5 days at port, where we could debark the ship and explore the area. Michael and I didn’t splurge on any excursions; we just went at it day by day and place by place. Wherever the winds took us, we went.

Stop 1 was Dunedin. There was a lot to see at this port. As I said, we didn’t have a plan, so we just started walking around and looking at the maps. New Zealand loves to put big murals on buildings. I find it fascinating. There is an Octagon center with lots of shops and places to eat.

I saw there were a few really cool lookout areas on the map, and Michael found it was about a 45-minute walk, so we opted to try that. The walk/hike took us through a college and the botanical gardens. Eventually, we made it, but it turned out to be to the BOTTOM of the lookout spot. There was no way I was climbing another huge mountain to overlook the area. Funny enough, where we did end up was on top of a huge hill. We were 5 streets away from Baldwin Street… The world’s steepest residential street on earth. We didn’t KNOW that until after we got back to port and were visiting a local shop. But, I was totally beat from our hike up to that point. We were just a few streets over and I had to walk down Blacks Road. I had to go EXTRA slow, IT WAS SO STEEP! We ended up walking down the street and taking a bus (such great transit!) back to the center. I rewarded myself with gelato. We ended the day with a visit to the local train station.

Stop 2 was Christchurch. So much to see and do here, it was hard to pack it all in. I wanted to check out the botanical gardens. (This was the best botanical garden of the entire trip.) It was a gorgeous day and the day could have been spent right there. Gorgeous summer day! We only spent about an hour there before moving along to visit the Quake City exhibit. This is a small museum that shows you the history of New Zealand’s earthquakes. There was a devastating hit at Christchurch in 2011, and you can still see the damage as you walk the streets. Tragic stories, but it is good to have this exhibit for visitors to learn about the area.

From there, we continued walking and explored the city. We found a small festival being set up for the Chinese New Year. There are city trollys everywhere you look. We didn’t ride one, but it looked cute! We ended up at a small game bar called Dice & Slice! We grabbed a bite and enjoyed a game of Regicide to honor Luke and New Zealand! Really great spot and great food.

Stop 3 was Wellington! A lot of the BGG@Sea folks took an exclusive BGG excursion to eat food and visit with Wellington designers and publishers. I would have enjoyed that, but I am not a foodie, so it was a bit out of my price range. We didn’t have much clue as to what to do, but there was a guy handing out maps who gave us some very helpful insight. Walk the harbor and visit Cuba Street for quirky shops and cafes. Take the cable car up to the botanical gardens and walk down to get back to the port. He told us to make sure to go to the cable car AFTER lunch, which was great advice. We did as we were told, and it was a lovely day! Apparently, we arrived at the cable car at the perfect time since the line was about a 2-hour wait earlier in the day. Crazy!

Stop 4 was Napier. This was amazing timing! Napier was in the middle of their yearly festival. The city is known for the Art Deco-style buildings, and this was a festival celebrating that. Two ships were docked, and the city was PACKED! It was a sight to behold. The streets were lined with old-timey cars, parades, performances, and music. It was pretty amazing, honestly. We almost instantly went to the beach, which was all these stones and not sand. Very weird, but cool. Michael had to go into the water! I had done some minor research on what I might want to do. I found that Te Mata Peak was a great place to visit. We needed to find a tour to get there, though. It was my day because as we walked into the information area, the lady said the tour I wanted to do was leaving in 5 minutes. It was impeccable timing, and it was exactly what I wanted to do.

The tour was great since it was a 30-minute drive to Te Mata Peak, and he took us right to the top! We only had 10 very quick minutes there, but I was on top of the world. Easily another fantastic highlight from my trip. Nothing tops Hobbiton, but Te Mata Peak was a close second. It was amazing.

We got back to town and found gelato, and there was an airshow happening! It was EPIC! loved Napier!!

Stop 5 was Tauranga, but really it was Mount Maunganui. I would say this was the biggest bust of a day. We had very little time on shore so we couldn’t plan to go to Rotorua, where we would have wanted to go. We tried to seek Blokarts, but we couldn’t find a place to try that. So, I don’t have much to report. But it was still a lovely day of walking around.

The rest of the trip on the cruise was all about the gaming and the We Will Rock You show that the cruise put on. I was super excited to see the musical. I’m glad we had such fantastic seats. The show was phenomenal. I am a bit surprised there were only 3 performances the whole cruise. I would have expected more performances of it. We would have seen it more than once if we could have.

Some of the game highlights from the trip. I got to learn Eternal Decks that Jeff so kindly brought along. I think everyone played this game at least once. It was constantly being played when I was looking around the room. It is a cooperative card game and it is basically a game of survival. You have to manage everyone’s decks of cards and take care of the threats. I loved it and am excited to play it more.

Of course, I was fortunate to get in a PRECIOUS game of The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship. The whole fellowship made it to Mordor this time! Epic battle until the end.

I requested Fate: Defenders of Grimheim to be part of the library as I heard great reviews. I was not disappointed! Cooperative tower defense games with the ability to upgrade your character as the game plays out. So many things I love in a game. Now to figure out how to get a copy. 🤔

Emberleaf really hit the spot too. Great use of cards and actions. Super cute to boot. Very happy to get the chance to play this game. One I will be looking forward to playing again!

Jeff hosts amazing events at various conventions, and Michael joined his Blood on the Clocktower games. Michael had a fantastic time playing those. We both joined Jeff’s Poker tournament! 14 people were playing, including Jeff. I made it to 5th position, but Michael took home the big win! It was a great event.

I had an amazing trip. It only makes me excited to cruise more and see the world. I have a special shout-out to [user=chivvo][/user] for giving me this amazing BGG@Sea gift crafted by his wife during the cruise.

Thanks for checking out my journeys to Middle-Earth New Zealand. I hope you enjoy it! I promise more NEWS in the next post!

-Steph the Hobbit-recruit

P.S. Michael and I go into SO MUCH more detail, if you can even imagine. Here is our FULL recap video.

Youtube Video

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