Read, Write, Ramble

 Our group of 18 met on time in the foyer of the hotel, ready for our 9am departure, but this time it was the coach that was late arriving, apparently caught in traffic.  We were away at 9:15 and the first stop was the old Railway Station so people could admire the very ornate and grand entry and concourse. I suspended my trauma from staying in the accommodation there last year, and stepped inside for a brief reminder of the former grandeur of the old building, which has unfortunately been allowed to become sad and rundown.  We moved onto the War Memorial Museum, and as we were a little early, had time for coffee before the doors to the galleries opened. Wallsy went straight to the war history gallery and I went straight to the gift shop, however the prices were extortionate, so I set off to find Wallsy.  An hour definitely wasn’t long enough to do the museum justice and we were herded  back onto the coach all too soon, headed for MOTAT, the Museum of Transport ...

There’s one in every group and we’ve already identified the one in our pre-tour tour group! But I am getting ahead of myself. The day was ours to do as we liked, so after breakfast we checked out the new Auckland underground rail loop and the shiny new stations with wide uncluttered concourses and multiple levels of escalators to reach the platforms (3 levels at Karanga-a-Hape!).  We exited each of the three new stations (the red square on the map below) to check out the area, before moving onto the next.  At the first, Te Waihorotiu, we popped out right beside the Civic Theatre where we saw Jesus Christ Superstar last night. After a bit of wandering we found the impressive Town Hall building, the Strand Arcade, and then dropped into a nearby OpShop before returning to the underground and boarding the next train.  We had already visited the Karangahape area, but took a brief walk, and found another OpShop to check out, before re-entering the station and heading for the th...

 Again, I woke 5 minutes before the alarm. I’m not sure why I bother to set one on my phone when my body clock seems to have an inbuilt alarm system. This time it was 05:40 and we needed to be at the bus stop over the road in plenty of time for a 6:45 pick up, because today we were going to Hobbiton.  As someone who had read the Hobbit way back when I was 14 or 15 years old, and watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy when the films were released in the early 2000s, I was excited. As someone who is not familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, Wallsy was probably less so, but he happily came along for the ride.  The coach collected us right at the appointed time and our Great Sights tour began. We soon had all 40 passengers on board and were heading out of Auckland, the driver assuring us, that despite the forecast rain, the day was going to be fine.  He talked continuously, some of it interesting, much of it neither relevant nor captivating, so much so that Wallsy popped h...

Today we set out, after a good night’s sleep and a buffet breakfast on the 13th floor with beautiful harbour views, with me as the guide. I had armed myself with a suggested 14km walk which would take us along the harbour front, past various points of interest, and through interesting and historic precincts.  The day was cool and overcast, perfect for meandering.  Two hours into the walk we were still in the Maritime Museum, the third point in our 14 point tour. In fact it took us three hours to see the museum which covered Maori watercraft, encounters between Maori and white men arriving on ships from the Northern Hemisphere on missions of exploration and discovery and later trade, through to modern craft, America’s cup bids and other record breaking ventures. It also comprehensively covered lighthouses in New Zealand, developments in reliably determining longitude and latitude and the workings of gps.  After that we needed lunch.    We settled for the museum c...