Advertisement
Published: March 1st 2009
Edit Blog Post
Nathan's Road
Playing with my mate Well, only a few days to go now, but we're putting all thoughts of home out of our heads for the time being, and enjoying our last few days here, especially the weather.
On Wednesday we spent the morning building roads out of wine corks and lego with young Nathan, Natalie's nephew, who had stayed the night "at Didda and Nanna's". This was great fun, especially when the dog decided to join in. We had visions of her scattering corks all over the place and ruining our day's work and causing ructions from Nathan, but amazingly she managed to skip lightly across the carpet, twice, without disturbing a single cork! If you saw Poopie, (there's a picture on an earlier blog) the words "skip" and "lightly" aren't the first words that spring to mind! The funniest bit was when Nathan started to say the words "traffic lights" and "roundabout" in a broad Yorkshire accent that he'd copied from Phyl, instead of copying my Oxford pronunciation.
On Thursday we caught the ferry and went over to Waiheke Island. I always have a chuckle when I think of Waiheke and remember Tony Ward's hilarious novel about Wacker McCracker, who went to
Auckland Domain
Starlight Symphony live there to escape his five ex-wives. No escape for me, I had to take mine with me. At least there were no shoe shops. We'd been to Waiheke a few years earlier, in the middle of winter, and met a guy called Shortie who had taken us to the RSA club in Ostend, after persuading us that it was the only place on the island where you could get a decent lunch. Well we didn't see Shortie this time, but we passed the RSA club about four times, as we had an all-day bus pass, and all the routes seemed to cross outside the club. This time it was summer, so there were many more people on the buses visiting the various points of interest, such as Oneroa, Rocky Bay and Onetangi Beach. There's even a beach called Blackpool! A good day out, it's worth going just for the ferry ride. Then back to Terry's for dinner.
The following day, as forecast, it rained all day, so not much to report. When it rains in Auckland it rains!
Saturday we had brunch with Matthew, then spent the afternoon on the beach at Mission Bay, even the seagulls
there know us by now, but hard luck lads, we didn't have any sandwiches with us this time!
In the evening it was the Starlight Symphony Concert, an event we had been looking forward to for some time. This takes place in the Domain, where the Christmas in the Park had taken place, which felt like months and months ago! Starlight Symphony was a free open-air concert, which had music for all tastes, but mainly classical. It even had an English feel about it, with Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem featured. The climax was Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, complete with cannons, fireworks and lasers. What a fantastic show, a shame you can never seem to capture the atmosphere on camera. It had a lot in common with the Opera in the Park which takes place in Leeds every summer; the main differences being that they don't seem to need tickets and a load of security personnel, and the fact that you weren't wrapped in a blanket by the end of the evening. Actually that seems to sum up the differences between our two countries quite well.
Sunday was the annual street barbie in Roy and Terry's street. Before
Auckland
Rainbow Warrior Memorial that we had wandered round smart-set Parnell again, before going to the Domain again to hear the Sunday lunch time jazz quartet. While we were there we received a by-now-familiar text from Matthew beginning with the words "I'm at the hospital...". This time it was a dislocated finger, which turned out to be a broken finger. A bit painful, but not too serious, thankfully. Time to take up bowls, Matthew.
The street barbie was good, it was interesting to meet some of the neighbours, and surprising how many of them were ex-UK. They even had the cheek to take the mick out of our accents!Everyone contributed some items of food, Matthew came along (with his fingers strapped together) and we would have sat there late into the evening, had a short, sharp, heavy shower not come along and scattered everyone.
Monday was the day that Queen Mary 2 came to town. Well it would have come to town had it not been too big to fit into the main wharf next to the Hilton. Instead it was stuck out on the other side of the containers (I can't remember the names of all these wharves!) Now that we have
a new-found interest in cruise ships, we just had to go and see it, so we got on a harbour cruise, which turned out to be the best way to see the ship. Well that's not strictly true, the best way to see the ship would have been to join the cruise itself, but the finances don't go on forever so we had to make do with the harbour cruise!
Terry had kindly lent us her car, so we had a quick trip across the bridge to Devonport for a final visit to Manuka's, our favourite lunch spot. In the evening, after enduring the traffic jams caused by everyone trying to see the Queen Mary, we had arranged to go to Portofino in Viaduct Harbour, for a farewell meal, to say a heartfelt thanks to Roy and Terry for their superb hospitality during our visit. Matthew came too of course, and we had an excellent meal in a lively atmosphere.
So, Tuesday arrived, our final day in New Zealand. All good things have to come to an end. Before we left home, way back in December, we talked about having a holiday of a lifetime, and it's certainly
lived up to that. I've enjoyed doing the blog, I hope you've enjoyed reading it. At least I now have a permanent record of all the wonderful memories of our trip to look back on. I'm sure we'll be back.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.098s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0502s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb