Yearly Archives: 2012

Rainy Christmas

First of all, merry Christmas to all of you. 🙂 Hopefully, you had a lovely celebration and happy days. The internet connection here isn’t great but at least each of us could call family briefly and wish them merry Christmas.

We’re in Hahei at the moment. Hahei is on the Coromandel peninsula and a sunshine capital. Usually. Right now, it is raining as it was for the last two days. Continue reading

Sparcles in the night

This is only going to be a very short update, but tonight was such an amazing experience, that I wanted to write some lines about it (and use the chance while having a propper internet connection).

We are in Waitomo Caves now, evading the rain in a cosy little cabin in the Top 10 Holiday Park. We arrived dripping wet, but the evening turned out beautifully, with evening sun and a warm breeze.

The receptionist recommended to go on a little hike and see the glow worms after dusk. The hike was one of the best experiences of my life. We arrived with some light left, and the walk through the bush and the beautiful Karst formations was stunning. In one of the caverns, we caught a glimpse of what was to come. Then, after dark, it just was magical. The bush was flooded to every corner with tiny sparcles, hundreds of them!

Just beautiful …

North!

panier preparation

Getting ready for the road again!

This is just a very short update, including a sorry to everyone. We are finally preparing to go back on the road again. So far, all the well learned steps come back nicely, even though this is a completely new home we are preparing from. Since there are a few slight chances that Flo might need to come back down to Wellington for job interviews, we decided with a heavy heart not to join our friends in the South Island over the holidays. The 350 NZ$ for the ferry were too much of a commitment to make under these circumstances.

Our plan is … to go north! We have the latest Lonely Planet for the North Island and our trusted Zumo 660 with all the points-of-intrests that the open NZ maps (thank you guys for that, btw.). Since there are many unknowns in regards to our timeframe, we have decided to go where the front wheel will leed us and sworn to enjoy every day as they come.

That’s it then … we will take our link to the world with us and might even post the occasional post on the road. See you on the other side!

The Hobbit premiere

start

start of the red carpet walk

Wednesday was the hobbit premiere. Starting time was 4.30pm. We decided to have lunch with Mat at noon and then head to the red carpet and meet Tina at 2pm. Seemed like a reasonable plan.

At 10am I saw the first pictures of the people waiting at the red carpet and I started to wonder if we wouldn’t be too late. Anyhow, lunch was great and then we headed in the embassy direction. We weren’t too late. To be honest, it was almost empty. A couple of hardcore fans blocked the first row but it was _only_ the first row. Imagine a red carpet with a single line of people all around it. That’s how it looked at 1pm. Also, I was surprised that almost no one was dressed up. Only a couple of really shitty applied ears and some Gandalf hats were to be seen. Flo and I went along the red carpet once to get a feel for what’s happening and also saw a girl in a Galadriel costume who declared very vocal that she wanted Cate Blanchett to sugn her dress and if people could help her achieve that goal. Continue reading

Pain Day

After a couple of rather crap days, I decided I needed some success. The success ended up to be a 19 km hike to the tops of some western hills. Yay me! Afterwards our friend Tina took us on a trip around Miramar. Just without shoes … too much pain!

Download file: fdbv3qyj3_Pain-Day.gpx

The Hobbit Artisan Market

entrance

Entrance to the Hobbit artisan market

As preparation for the Hobbit premiere (today! YAY!) there is an Hobbit Artisan Market in Waitangi park. It’s been on since last Sunday and will close today. Flo and I managed to go there twice which is enough as it is really quite small. =)

The entrance is a wooden Hobbit hole. On Sunday, there was a lot going on there with many people taking their pictures with that sign. When we were back on Monday, it was less busy and we also took a picture. The cute thing about this photo opportunity is that the city council of Wellington has hired some people to stand around the entrance to take picture of people/couples who always have the problem that they need to ask strangers to get a picture of both. So cute! =) Continue reading

Pictures by Yasmin

Just a picture post basically.

 

The breakdown of a foodie

bread aisle

bread aisle (by-nc-sa – capl@washjeff.edu)

New Zealand is an awesome country, plain and simple. We love it here, we love the people and we love the land. But oh boy, it is soooo hard to be a foodie in New Zealand. Today our desperate quest for good food reached critical mass. We HAD to do something. And we did.

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Middle of Middle Earth

Yasmin went back to Melbourne today and we decided to bring her to the airport so that we could see the giant Gollum statue that Weta Workshop has installed. Tina and Brendan were okay with us borrowing the car once more so we picked Yasmin up at Nomads with all her luggage.

It was enough time to go and grab some lunch before driving to the airport. The original plan was to show her the Burger place at Lyall Bay that has all the vegetarian burgers but when we arrived, the trailer was gone. A quick check on the internet confirmed that the place was closed (and thus gone) and will re-open on November 11th. *sigh* Continue reading

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Flo and I had a great day. We met up with Yasmin, my German/Persian seat neighbour on the plane to Sydney who is visiting NZ at the moment.

First, we had coffee at Floriditas and then took the bus to the top of Mt Vic to get a good view on Wellington. Walking up there is quite…..a pain in the butt so I was happy to take the bus. The view on Wellington was great as it was sunny, only the horizon was too misty to see the South Island.  We decided to walk back down. Had the most yummy passionfruit ice cream afterwards and made it a date to watch the fireworks together at 9 pm.

Wellington from above

Wellington from above

View to the other side

View to the other side to the airport and Miramar

View into the harbour

View into the harbour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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