Blogs from Whangaparaoa, Auckland, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania

Good evening everyone, so moved on from 'little Coromandel' today and took the Coast Road all the way down to Thames, beautiful scenery, could see Auckland from across the water. The road was very windy, not so many crazy drivers on the road today, but it was probably the most windy journey yet. Stopped briefly at Thames, a town, wanted to see the oldest Hotel there, apparently during the gold rush in the 1800's there were over 100 hotels, now there are just four, 'Brian Boru Hotel (1868) being the oldest. We continued travelling and after a couple of hours driving we went into Auckland, parked up and went to The Victoria Market, basically it was a trendy cafe/bar/restaurant with boutique shops in and out, the place was an old working industrial building. Very nice but ... read more

Keeping a watch on the weather maps of Melbourne and Tasmania. Melbourne seems to be slightly hotter in the day than Auckland, but with less humidity thank goodness. Tasmania, looks like its cooler at the moment around 20 deg C in the day, and somewhat cooler at night. So a selection of clothes will have to be taken. Grandads Shuttle has been ordered for our very early start on Tuesday 15th, they will be picking us up at 4.45am !!..can't wait ! lol... ... read more

After months of planning we are on our way on our big adventure tomorrow. We still find it surreal. We hope to update our travel blog as often as possible and add photos...... watch this space!... read more

I know we're not strictly on holiday over here this time around but you can't help but feel like it when the sun is shining, it's lovely and warm outside and your surrogate mum phones you up to ask if you fancy going to the beach for the day. God bless Liz, she knows how to look after us! After a busy week trying to get all the bits and pieces together that we need for the apartment like saucepans, food and furniture (first 2 are now sorted; still don't have anything much to sit on!) and beginning the weary task of job hunting, a trip to the coast was just what we needed. Liz and Allard arrived to pick us up at 10.30 bearing the mighty handy loaned gifts of a giant TV and a ... read more

Arrived in Auckland today and went stright to bedhaving spent all day on a plane. 23rd- We had a fantastic and productive day today visting the sky tower and booking ourselves onto the Magic bus which despite its name is not magic at all, in fact it works in exactly the same way as a conventional bus, I cant tell you how dissapointed I was to learn this. A little misleading I felt. The sky tower is esentialy a really tall building with a cafe at the top. We went to the top and got some amazing views of the beautiful city of Auckand and then when we had had seen all there was to see and taken a lot of photos (which I promptly deleted along with the rest of the photos taken up to ... read more