Blogs from North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 15

Auckland is a large busy city. They have finally decided to put an underground metro in so there are road works all over the place which are going to take several years to complete. It has a large Asian community as well as Maori so there are lots of take away cafes catering for these people. For the first time we also saw several homeless on the streets. However down on the Marina , once you have negotiated the road works there are some great restaurants. We had tried Oyster & Chop so the next night went to Soul and had great oysters and crab linguini. On our last day we decided to go up the Sky Tower. It costs about 20$ each just to go to the viewing platform. A far better deal is to ... read more

It was very sad to leave the ship in Auckland and know that no passengers were going to be boarding and the majority of the crew would be sent home because of this coronavirus. We were the last cruise ship allowed into New Zealand before the total ban. We checked into the Hotel Grand Windsor on Queens St, which is a lovely hotel on one of the busiest streets in the city close to all amenities. Our first trip out was to the Art Gallery, which has a nice small section of International Art but is mostly New Zealand Art. We both love aboriginal art but I am afraid that Maori Art doesn't do anything for us. We fancied a Chinese meal for lunch as Auckland has a very large Asian population. We made the mistake ... read more

We spent the last night at Lake Aniwhenua, which was very interesting. It was a cultural Maori experience, with a Maori tour-guide showing us around and telling us some pretty wild myths from their mythology. I attended a traditional flax-weaving course and wove a bracelet! Love that for me. For dinner they made Hangi; it’s a traditional way of cooking food in a firepit with heated stones, underground and sort of buried. The food was smoked and steamed essentially to perfection - it was so good. Tasted even smokier than things from the smoker! They also made fried bread, which was just fabulous. We ate out of little woven bowls, with our fingers, so I had way too much fun. Needless to say, I ate far too much.... read more

We had booked ourselves into a summer house for the last week of our trip. A kind of holiday from the holiday. The aim was to find our own space, wind down and have time to soak us the last of the sun and the waves before returning to a very wet and, in comparison, pretty cold northern Europe. If I have to say it myself, we did pretty well at just that! We spent the time at the playground, at the beach and doing a few trips. But not very many. We had rented a big summer house, so had invited new friends, that we met over Christmas in Bay of Islands, down to stay for the weekend. Only plan set in stone for the 7 days was a trip to see Cathedral Cove and ... read more

Leaving Auckland, we headed a couple of hours south to Matamata. Nearby, on what used to be a 506 hectare (1250 acre) sheep farm, Sir Peter Jackson found what he felt was the perfect site to locate his set for The Shire. In particular, a large tree matched a tree described in Tolkien's works. He built the set using temporary materials for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. By agreement with the landowners, it was all torn down after filming was completed. When he decided to film the Hobbit trilogy, he approached the family that owned the land and they all agreed to build a permanent set, and use it as a tourist attraction after filming wrapped up. I believe the second set was identical to the first with the exception of the more durable materials ... read more