I ‘m a big Lord of the Rings fan, in part, because I admire the three films’  beautiful locations.

So you can imagine during our New Zealand vacation last August how happy I was  to travel from Auckland to Rotorura, the heart of the Maori culture, by driving through one of the areas that Peter Jackson filmed for those movies.

Even though it was that area’s winter, my family and I drove  through some of the most unusual and  lush landscape I have ever seen.

On the way back to Auckland airport, we drove through Hobbiton, where 17 of the original 37 hobbit holes and some structures from the film set are still present. Click here for more information and pictures of this location.

During our visit,Robert bought me a terrific book, The Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook by Ian Brodie that provided us with a lot of great information on all of sites where the movies were filmed.