Shooting with the Nikor 24-85mm f2.8-4 D

I've been looking at getting a new walking around lens for our European adventure in October, because as much as I love my 50mm, it just doesn't have the range I want for holiday snaps. Especially for architectural shots (like I'll be doing in Barcelona) I'll need something wider. I asked around for some advice and got put onto the Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f2.8 ED which is a beautiful lens but the cheapest I could find it for was $1700 so that was a no-go. For almost a third of the price I can get my hands on the Nikon AF 24-85mm f2.8-4D IF. Luckily for me a friend of mine owns this lens and kindly let me borrow it for the weekend. Exuberant, I put the lens on my D40x and I was immediately less exuberant as my camera failed to auto focus. I frantically searched for a button on the lens to switch to auto-focus but there was none. It seems my camera is too old and crap to auto focus on D-series lenses, I need G. :(
I'm not so good on the manual focusing, so this won't be the lens to take to Europe where I'll want to be able to focus fairly quickly instead of fiddling with my camera and missing the holiday.
The manual focus is a little touchy and I need a lot more practice, as can be seen from the orange flower in the images below. The lens might not be great for me for the holiday, but I had a play around with the macro function, which is absolutely awesome. I have bought a different lens (AF-S DX Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF) to take overseas, but this lens will stay on my to-buy list for when I get a new body next year.
A few macro shots below to show how sharp this lens is, and the bokeh. Enjoy.