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Published: March 31st 2015
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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 didn't seem to be very successful, shops weren't open and it was a bit soulless, shame cos it really was a nice place. We then decided to do my favourite, NOT, and that was too go up the Auckland Tower, here we go again, the LIFT job !! Did my usual waited at the bottom for more people to get in with us, by now
Stu says nothing, he is just bored by the whole PALAVA of it all !! Well I am, so I'm sure he is. Up up up we go, this lift goes to the 51 floors with a glass bottom floor in it just to make you feel sicker !!! And also open windows on the lift doors !! Even worse !!! From there we take another lift, oh yes, it is never ending !! and go up up up to the Sky Deck, floor 60, this one was manned, but I think it was because it was so old and rickety !! Blinkin awful thing. Had spectacular views though, then Stu said we should get a coffee, really ? So in the blinkin lift again, I did look for stairs, none to be used and went down to level 52, oh this was after we went to the main observation floor to have the 360 degree views. The history of the tower is, it took 2 years and 9 months to build, cost 85 million NZ dollars, weighs approximately 6,000 elephants (I like that !!), if you put 37 buses standing end to end, that's how high it is (328
meters) has 1,267 stairs from the base to the sky tower to the sky deck, (couldn't find them !) contains a refuge area for 854 people, have no idea why and should remain standing if there was an earthquake of 8.0 occurring within 20 kilometres of the sky tower. Whilst we were in the restaurant, there were a couple of crazy people who did the jump off the building malarkey, now why on earth would you want to do that ?? However, where we were sat we didn't actually see them, just saw the rope go, people in the restaurant were just running to the windows, apparently they don't actually jump, they are lifted down by the rope and it is controlled, all 636 feet 194 meters), still, jump, lifted down, there all absolutely mad !!
So from Auckland (we are coming back here for a couple of days), we drove out of there across the Auckland Harbour Bridge to a place called WHANGAPARAOA, I'm getting very good at this !! Ok I confess I copied it off my map !! Took another hour, basically it was just a stop over, otherwise we would be driving all day to
get to our next destination. Well when we arrived here, we thought what a strange place to stay at, it was just VERY residential, real family place like Chandlers Ford, Stu picked it, he said 'haven't got a clue why, must have been a reason, but can't remember', REALLY and we know it is only going to get worse !!! So we found the B & B house with a note on the door from the owners apologising that they had missed us, but the key was in a box and go in and make yourself at home. Well ok, very trusting, as we did that, they turned up, such nice people, she is from Brazil called Fernanda and lived in Edinburgh for 9 years and met him, Eamon. They have two tiny children, she said the reason she was doing the B & B was because there was a main tourist road in the town and people will use her place for a stop over, just as we were doing. (Oh yes, now it was all coming back to Stu !!!) Fernanda had only been doing it since January but was very successful and I understand why, what a
lovely homely place, she said 'I'm not a very good cook, I can only make poached eggs and I buy the crossaints in the bakery !! Well I said 'that's all you need for breakfast' !! the unit is the downstairs of their house, well there were chocolates (like thorntons), a bottle of wine, an array of biscuits, nice coffee and not only that they have been down twice to give us some New Zealand fruit, but can't remember the name of it and pastries and cakes. Stu said this is just pure luxury, so lovely, soon stuffed down those cakes I can tell you !!
After we all had a chat, Stu and I walked down the road and found a lovely little beach, then we found a pub, 'buy two meals' for the price of one !! that is definitely our kind of place so feasted on squid and fish, soooooo delicious.
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