A tale of two cities - city two - Auckland

Two days after we got back from Christchurch we left home and headed for Auckland - driving this time. One flying trip was enough for me. Auckland had that buzz about it that you expect to find in a big city. That buzz that I thought was missing from Christchurch. Hopefully that buzz will return to them soon.


We stayed in the suburb of Ponsonby, just far enough out of the central city to be away from the sky scrapers. But close enough to have these views.

In an amazing suburban apartment.

With views looking out over Ponsonby to the sunset. We were just far enough away from the main street not to hear the traffic, but close enough to enjoy the best chip shop, the beautiful cafes and the very interesting people.

Lots of cool houses to "Oh look at that one" over.

I nipped out in the morning for a stroll to take some snaps of interesting stuff.

The church window is the only daisy I noticed, I am sure there were lots more I just did not see them.

There was lots of lovely food. So lovely my son had double helpings of crepe and had to be dragged away still asking for more.

The reason for our trip was to see some dinosaurs in the Walking with Dinosaurs spectacular. And it was a spectacular. And it was really worth it - our youngest found the whole experience amazing. I don't think he has ever been that quiet, ever.


And just to finish it all off we passed this caravan at the side of the road on the way back home. I wonder if it had had its tyres pinched!

Black Swans

For about the last 6 months I have been planning a suprise for my dear Hubbies birthday. A trip to Auckland for the weekend to see Steely Dan. I had it planned down to the smallest degree. But as usual there was a black swan waiting in the wings.

My eldest son was going to look after the youngest and my middle son was to stay at a friends for the weekend. I was really worried about the oldest and the youngest but figured that the middle one would be OK with his friend.

The day before we went Peter got an email from the bank to say that the password on his credit card had been reset. We did wonder why but the bank said nothing to worry about. Then when I checked Peter's credit card there were a whole lot of payments going through. It took over 4hrs for us to persuade Visa that we were not in the UK and not using the card. Eventually they agreed to stop the card! Now you would think this is what they should have done straight away. Instead they said to check our next statement due in about 4 weeks time and then dispute anything! Moral of this story check your credit card statements closely and often. So with no credit card the trip was going to not be an extravagant trip. But we still decided to continue.

So off we went and had a brill day driving up to Auckland, it took us 9 hrs. We went through Rotarua and stopped in Tirau and Cambridge. I even got to visit Kate Fitzpatrick's shop, I wanted to buy it all.

We arrived at the hotel and settled in, had some room service snacks and a nice bottle of wine. Then lazed around watching TV and chilling. Then the bomb shells started to drop. Our middle son had decided to go Awol with his girlfriend. The poor parents of the friend he should be with were searching everywhere. He was not answering his phone or texts. So that was the end of our weekend. All we could do was sleep off the wine and head for home. No shopping, no hanging around in cafe's, no browsing book shops and most importantly no Steely Dan. What always goes wrong is the thing you least expect, a black swan. Needless to say middle son appeared the next day wondering what all the fuss was about. He knows now.

Some views of Auckland. This is about all we saw of city. Maybe next time.

Just had a great time in Auckland at the Calico Christmas quilt show, with the ladies from Kierunga Quilt group. We were treated and spoilt all weekend. It was brilliant to just let sombody else do the organisation, especially when they did it so well. Thank you to Shirley and Colleen for making it such a good time. And thanks to all the other ladies for all the goodies passed around.
The first view is of the sun rising, taken from my hotel room. The second is from a room at the front of the hotel over to Auckland CBD. The hotel is the Byron on Spencer, a nice tidy comfortable place to stay on the North Shore.