I traveled on Air New Zealand and Qantas and both had gluten-free options on all flights. The cabin personnel were obviously aware and if a GF meal was preordered it was the first to be served! And Qantas serves a meal on flights as short as three hours!

When we arrived in Auckland after an overnight flight from L.A., the hotel's buffet breakfast was still being served and we were welcomed (even though we had not stayed the previous night). And what were the first things I saw on the buffet--two GF cereals and a loaf of GF bread (with its own toaster!!). And they were well marked. What a nice surprise and a great way to start a vacation.

At every Auckland restaurant we went to there were GF choices and they weren't a secret. For example, in the café at Auckland Museum, there were several GF choices and they could make a GF sandwich (with decent seeded and grainy bread, not "white" bread).

Of course there were exceptions. The free muffins offered on the harbor cruise were all wheaty. And I doubt if McDonald's had GF rolls (but I'm not even sure about that).

After Auckland, I went to Australia and joined a guided tour of Australia and New Zealand. The tour company had been advised of my GF diet and whenever the group went out to dinner, the restaurant was prepared with GF alternatives. The only thing lacking was GF dinner rolls.

All of the hotels had buffet breakfasts and some of them had GF bread available. But there were plenty of alternatives such as scrambled eggs, bacon, fruit, and baked beans on every hotel buffet. Places visited included Melbourne, Alice Springs, Uluru/Ayers Rock, Cairns, and Sydney in Australia and Christchurch and Queenstown and smaller places in New Zealand.

In some places we went on long bus rides and had lunch stops where we bought our own lunches. Without fail, every one of these places (often the only business in 100 miles) had GF options. In one place, I asked if the soup was GF and the woman said, "No, it contains pasta." But then she offered their GF choices. But in other places, the soups were GF. And these folks all knew what GF was. No need explaining!

In Christchurch, New Zealand we did not stay in the usual hotel the tour company uses because it was too damaged in the severe earthquake of Feb. 2011. So we were in a hotel which had some damage but was still able to house guests. However, their restaurant was damaged and so they were serving a continental breakfast in a converted hotel room and the choices were cereal, fruit, and toast. And even they had GF bread!

Our group had the privilege of dinner in a private home in Christchurch and there were two of us in the group on a GF diet. The hostess knew about us and told us right away that her good friend has celiac disease and she knows all about it and assured us that the delicious meal had been prepared without any wheat, rye, or barley.

It seemed that whenever I asked about GF, the person in the restaurant, sandwich shop, or deli knew what it was even if they didn't have it. No one tried to pretend that what they had was OK when they knew it wasn't. What enlightened people!

One town we stopped at was Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand, near the glacier of the same name. The town has fewer than 500 residents and yet its grocery store carries several GF items including fresh bread!

Mt. Cook is New Zealand's highest peak at 12,000+ ft. and is served by a hotel with an enormous buffet with GF items well-marked. There's no town there, just the hotel complex, with the nearest town probably 100 miles away.