Auckland



We had glorious* weather on our trip to Auckland. BM was there for a conference and as I knew I had to go up for meetings in the same month, we managed to coincide and then stay an extra day on our own dime!

We went for a boat trip after work on Friday to Waiheke Island.  Unfortunately, while being a lovely location, we had a bad experience at one of the restaurants.  One of my meetings was with a colleague who lives on Waiheke Island and we bumped into her on the ferry.  She recommended Cable Bay as a restaurant if we were looking for a treat!  BM and I got a taxi to the vineyard and were pleasantly surprized by the view and fantastic sculpture garden outside.  While BM decided on his wine selection in the bar as the restaurant wasn't yet open - I walked over to see if I could make a booking.  Only to be told they were booked out.

Understandably disappointed we phoned around and booked dinner in another restaurant and then booked another taxi back to the main village once we had finished our drinks and had taken in the spectacular view.  On the way out about an hour later, the restaurant was VERY empty.  Mulling it over in the taxi on the way to the other restaurant, I decided to phone to enquire if a booking was available.  Strangely enough - it was and pretty much at any of the three times we cared to mention on the phone.

Now, I'm pretty sure it was a reflection on the way I was dressed (leather jandles/flip flops), a black top and a skirt with leggings but I would have left Waiheke Island a lot happier if they had just told me there was a dress code and given that I actually had work shoes in my bag but was walking around after finishing my meetings, I would have been happy to change.  It left a very sour taste in my mouth for the place and I wanted to share.  

The rest of our trip was fun and we stayed in a hotel near Shortland Street of Kiwi dramatic fame.  Strangely Shortland Street doesn't even have a hospital!


Some amazing trees in a park behind the Shortland Street sign.


A beautiful building.




And lunch! :)  All in all a nice trip.






Of course, by glorious, I mean too hot!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Siding stories

Image
We've had a tonne of house projects this year and currently the house's siding is being fixed.  If the weatherboard is cracked or rotten, we're replacing it.  If a lot is coming off we're putting insulation in behind it.  Lots of hammering and sawing and lots of scary pictures! We had a fun afternoon tracking down the colour of the house paint.  As it turns out, its Wattyl's Flemish Blue (Deep Base, Solagard, B 144.0, E 280.0, V84.0, KX 144.0).  I love this colour and need to think about sheen's for when we get the house repainted next year.  For now we just went with the closest to the tin we already had.  One side of the house is done and we've painted a first coat of the blue. We've also had scaffolding up for a while.  Its been hard to get in and out of the house with it though - this is our entrance walkway. This is the other side of the house after a day's work removing the weatherboards.  There's a lot more work requ...
Read more

Merino baby cardy

Image
A quick make but it took me ages to finish!  I was gifted this merino fabric ages ago at a fabric hoarders fabric swap.  The binding is from a local Japanese shop on Cuba street . Cute, no?  I started it so long ago that I've managed to lose the free pattern I used to create it.  oophs!  I like the tie I've pulled together a loop from the binding for the front. I've french seamed the seams.  I really love the finish.  This was one of my first knit garments so its lovely to have it finally finished.  I didn't have a recipient in mind at the time - just wanted to use up the fabric and start thinking about knit fabrics but a friend recently had a baby girl so it'll go in the post soon!
Read more

Painting

Image
My craft room was originally a dark terracotta brown and a deep almost blue navy.   I finally picked a colour for it and spent some of the time over my Christmas holidays painting merrily away.  It really was a pleasurable experience (except when we realised that the skirting boards weren't actually white and we had to redo those too as they had bits of the old colours liberally applied in places they shouldn't have!). The colour of the room was something in between the photo above and the one below.  They really were quite strong colours. (And in case you noticed, yes I did write on the wall with my tester before we painted!) I'm very much a process girl and I thought a photo of the room with my painters tape up and the undercoat would be vaguely interesting for people. Ok, fine, I can't lie.  I'm just too damn pleased with the whole process not to share it all - it is a web log after all :D It was at this stage that I remembered my mother's sage ad...
Read more