Days 14-18

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We had an excellent Chinese meal on Friday night at the Dragon Boat - highly recommended if you visit Auckland - and I used chopsticks all the way through, probably a first. Steak's not so easy though, so Phyl had to resort to a fork.
By contrast, Saturday was fairly uninteresting, I'm sure you don't want to hear about Foodtown again. We were all a bit tired, so had a quiet day and stayed in and watched a movie in the evening. Even Matthew was tired, after two nights out on the trot, even he can't stand the pace like he used to!

On our Sunday walk, we started by taking a trip to Carlaw Park, scene of many historic Rugby League battles between the Kiwis and Great Britain. Sadly, it is now a large building site, though you can still make out where the playing surface and the stands were, and in my minds eye I could see the likes of Vince Karalius skittling Kiwi forwards out of the way and handing the ball to Alex Murphy to finish off the move. Phyl of course was bored stiff by now and couldn't understand why I had tears in my eyes. I had even more tears in my eyes after we went through the woods and emerged in Parnell, right next to an expensive shoe shop. Parnell is another suburb we could quite easily live in, though never be able to afford. The estate agents here are very cagey these days about publishing prices, they like the phrase "price by negotiation", which means "if you have to ask, you can't afford it"

The shops in town have certainly livened up a bit. There's been a lot of talk in the media about the recession here, and how it needed a good Christmas week to boost the economy, well they seemed to be doing well when we did our Christmas shopping the other day.

We're enjoying living in the city for a while, I haven't lived in a city centre since I moved to Birmingham 39 years ago, and it does have some advantages. For a start, you don't need a car, which has the added advantage that you can have a beer whenever you want one, without having to worry about the consequences. So the other day we split up to do our Christmas shopping, and agreed to meet in the pub afterwards. A few relaxing drinks later, we were back in our apartment. What happened to all the stress you normally associate with Christmas?

This week we have spent a lot of our energies arranging our trip to Australia. From a quick nip in a plane (which was never really true, it takes 3 and a half hours from Auckland to Sydney), it has grown into a two week cruise on the Diamond Princess, around NZ and then onto Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney. Well it was either that or two weeks in a camper van, and we've done all that before, so it was no contest really. We leave on 17th Jan, so plenty of time to prepare. No doubt that will involve many more visits to shoe shops. That is one part of the NZ economy that will have grown by the time we leave. I've included some pictures of the ship, which happened to be in town today. It's huge!

Today is Christmas Eve, and apart from missing the English end of our family, and our friends, I'm sure we'll be in touch with them at some stage , we are really looking forward to it. The fridge is stocked up with solids and liquids, but the important thing is the weather. We are hoping to get to the beach with a picnic, but if it rains we don't really have a plan B! Fortunately the latest forecast is not too bad. Whatever happens we will be eating out in the Sky Tower on Christmas Day Evening.

So if anyone out there is reading this, can we take the opportunity to wish you a happy Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year.

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Photos

The Diamond Princess
That's her at the front of the picture!