Photo Update (Bay of Islands)

Nightime view from our Sublime Apartment

Sea Kayaking at Paihia

Horse-trekking in Paihia/Opua

Did someone call the cops?!

View from Helena's Bay Gallery Cafe

Roo, Lucy & The Bear

We've come on holiday by mistake Vol I

Lucy and Roo arrived on 8th November and after a day and a half relaxing we dragged them off to the Bay of Islands (240k / 3 hours drive from Auckland city) for a long weekend. We stayed at the very sublime Sublime Apartments in delightful Paihia, a small coastal town with a very European feel. Our first night found us in an Ibiza style bar (below) where it seems all the young trendy travellers hang out.

Friday saw us hiring two double kayaks and paddling energetically across the bay to Waitangi (where the treaty between the main Maori tribes and the British government was signed in 1840, fact fans!) via a tiny beach stop on a neighbouring island. It was great fun and we cut a dashing picture as we hauled our kayaks up onto Waitangi beach, picked up our paddles and strolled nonchanontly around the smart visitors centre in our wet shorts & t-shirts! After refreshing tea & cake which Roo & Lucy demanded, we paddled the long trip back to Paihia.

Fuelled by the previous day's energy we headed a little outside of Paihia (Opua) on Saturday for an exciting afternoon of horse-trekking. Our horse-experience ranged from beginner to advanced. Rachel had barely touched a horse before but kept up with the main group on the slightly stubborn Danish and even managed a little trot - very impressive for her first time! Lucy cantered off on her horse for a while whilst the rest of us plodded along slowly up hill and down dale. Roo's horse Po found the walk a big distraction to his constant desire to eat and Tom coped very well with Santos who almost threw him off whilst having an uncivilised disagreement with Lucy's horse!

In the evening we ventured over by ferry to Russell which used to be the capital city and is now a small tourist spot with a few shops and pubs. We didn't stay too long due to having to catch the last ferry back at 10 and Rachel being a little spooked by the old buildings and definite ghostly vibe to the town! Still, the ferry ride was lovely!

We left fairly early on Sunday to take in a few more bays on our way back to Auckland. The first beach we stopped at was a bit muddy but the sea was gorgeous so we strolled along and met a manic little bird running around making a racket - possibly to protect her little ones from such strange intruders as us.

Tom then had some off-road driving practice and we found ourselves at a gorgeous quiet beach further round the Pacific coast-line. After a tentative swim in which Lucy & Rache insisted on panicking at the slightest hint of some life under the water, and a thorough exploration of the beach, we headed back on the road for a while. Lucy and Roo were getting peckish and started to demand tea and cakes again, so as if by magic a gorgeous roadside Gallery and Cafe appeared!

Helena's Bay Gallery is a must stop off point when travelling from Bay of Islands to Auckland - the art work is prolific, eclectic and beautiful, the view is awesome and the food and hospitality as friendly and yummy as any you'll find in NZ - deeeelicious! Lucy & Roo made friends with the resident dog, disguised as a rock hunting bear.

more photos to come...

Fireworks Frenzy

View From The Bridge

A couple of shots from our deck on Friday night :)

Seven Eleven

The last few weeks have been very busy with moving plans, buying furniture etc. After a hectic Friday night in which we packed up and L&M kindly helped us move to the new pad, we deserved a few beers. However, by Saturday morning, when we had to drive around Auckland picking up the furniture we'd bought on TradeMe, the beers didn't seem like such a good idea after all!

Mikey was our excellent driver and tour guide and despite my (Rachel's) almost constant nausea a fun day was had by all! I managed to hold it together enough to sit in the van whilst Tom & Mikey lugged a sofa bed down steep side tracks, rearranged chairs, matresses, beds etc in the back of the van and generally did all the work. To be fair, I had organised all the bidding, sales and pick-ups over the previous weeks so I felt that my work was already done ;)

The apartment looks very homely and is a pleasure to live in though Tom claims that the retro dressers make him cringe! They will grow on him I'm sure :)

Some pics to follow- oh the excitement!

Some Photos...

A couple pics of our new place (empty at the moment), and yes, the second one is the view of the sea from our deck! :)

The Land That Fashion Forgot??

Following on from earlier post:

Stylist Needed to work with celebrity clients such as these:

Saturday Night Fever

We went to a music event at Manakau Stadium Saturday night with friends Mikey, Duncan & Leanne.
Here's some pics:

Burgerfull

We had a productive Saturday exploring Auckland and viewing potential apartments, following our decision to look for a more homely suburban rental apartment. We saw some nice places but nowhere was quite perfect enough! One lovely place very near Herne Bay beach had 2 huge living spaces, 1 bed and a bath - an important requirement - but it had no real kitchen, just a bar with fridge and counter-top "cooker". We thought about it for a few seconds and realised that this would not fulfill our gourmet lifestyle!

Talking of Gourmet, we stopped for lunch in Parnell at Burgerfuel who make the best burgers - it's official! Had gorgeous vege burgers which have to be tasted to be believed:



COMBUSTION VEGE - Sunflower seed, chickpea, cumin and coriander pattie, avocado, peanut sauce, salad, relish, aioli. $8.40

COMBUSTION TOFU - Organic smoked teriyaki tofu, avocado, peanut sauce, salad, relish, aioli. $7.90



Yummy!

Cox's Bay

Sunday found us wondering the streets of Auckland again; this time around Cox's Reserve, a suprisingly green oasis in the middle of a residential area, slightly west of the city centre:















We had to stop for a while to admire this awesome view at Cox's Bay, which looks out across the Waitemata Harbour:















Refreshed, we strolled on through Herne Bay gawping at the ridiculously huge houses with private swimming pools and tennis courts and meandered down to the beaches there:



Beautiful eh!

post script: true news item on local radio this a.m:
"Truck of chickens die in road accident!
A truck full of chickens died in a road accident in Christchurch this morning. Had they survived this tragic accident, they might have made it to their destination unharmed; KFC."

! :-0 !

"Rodney you plonker"

Had a great day on Saturday driving up North to Rodney (!) county with L&M. We managed to get to and explore 5 different beaches, stop for a fish & chip lunch, see some awesome landscape and swim in the Pacific ocean. L&M also managed to squeeze in some boogie-boarding!! How exhausted are we – some more than others!

Here’s some pics:

Election Fever

It's been another busy week and a quiet weekend. Getting stuck into series 4 of 24 which started here recently. Invited L&M round ours to watch the latest episode Fri, then down to the lovely Kingslander where you can order a real pint (568ml rather than 500ml) - woohoo! - a rarity in these parts it seems. A pleasant evening was had.

No other interesting news apart from the election which happened yesterday - it's not really clear who's won yet as there's still another 25,000 "special" votes to come in (from overseas and other electorate) and the "winning" party - Labour - doesn't have a majority as yet.

Labour are ahead so far, with 1 seat more than National, so they have to form a coalition with one of the other parties. No-one would say who they wanted to co-align with but I'm sure it's all been agreed months ago.

The TV3 broadcast was amusing with John Campbell - presenter extrodinaire with similarities to Jeremy Paxman but much much funnier - interviewing MPs and their over-excited supporters. Photographers waited outside Helen Clark's (current Labour PM) and Don Brash's (rival National Party leader) homes for hours waiting to see who would come out first to make a non-committal celebration/commiseration speech - weird & fascinating TV!

Talking of NZ TV - we're particularly loving the coverage of stories which wouldn't make page 38 of The Sun:

Resident Calls Police Over Neighbour's Noisy Flag Pole - the poor Dutchman was only trying to show his love for his new country by flying the New Zealand flag outside his house, and when one night, he forgot to take the flag down, his pesky neighbours called the police to report his breach of noise levels! A top item on the TV news here.

Man In Residenital Unit May or May Not Have Bomb - Major news item this week: A man was reported to have explosives on him which he was threatening to detonate unless he spoke with Prime Minister, Helen Clark. Reports throughout the day revealed.....nothing! Turns out there was no bomb. I wonder if he got to have a nice chat with Hels tho?

Also, and perhaps more importantly, the fashion choices of the news and weather presenters has to be seen to be believed! No smart monochrome with the odd snazzy tie or top under a more conservative suit here. Rachel wants to get a job as a stylist to the stars well, TV presenters anyway, and smarten them up a bit. No more bright green huge floral A-line high waisted skirts pleeeease (see Carol and Mihi here and some of these others for examples)! Jazzy clothes are fine, just not on the TV.

The election evening's excitment was interspersed with a news item about a light-aircraft stolen from a local airfield. The pilot was threatening to fly the plane into Auckland's Sky Tower all night. As a result, Sky Tower was evacuated, but the pilot eventually crashed the plane into one of the local beaches with seemingly no major injuries. It appears his motivations were more emotional than political but the timing was coincidentally appropriate. Read more of this fascinating story here!

Bye for now x

Underwater Life

pics from Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World we visited on the weekend.

We're far too busy to write anything at the moment (!) but suffice to say that Rache is artiste extraordinare right now with a canvas production line rolling out works by the day ! and Tom has decided not to do the full marathon in October (who's stupid idea was that!) and go for the half marathon instead.

All Black (Beaches)

Go All Blacks! They won of course, beating the aussies 34-24 but it was close at one point. Great atmosphere in the stadium especially sitting amongst the hoons and die hard Kiwi, Brazilian, Scandanavian and English All Blacks fans in the terraces!



Today we went on a road trip, with our new friends Lawrence and Miriam















Wow, I think we covered a fair bit of ground, out to Karekare & Piha (All Black (and shiny) volcanic sand!) beaches & Waitakere Ranges (which are all out to the west of Auckland, only 40mins drive away).



Headed to Mission Bay after, east of the city, then back for a few drinks in the Viaduct Harbour and a huuuuuuge foodhall meal. Had a lovely day but very tired now, so goodnight jon-boy :) zzzzzzzz

A few more pics...

A couple of views of Auckland, and the Sky Tower taken on Tom's route to/from work...

.... and our apartment :)















Off to see the All Blacks thrash the Wallabies (!) tonight in the final match of the Tri Nations Bleddisloe Cup tonight- should be a great game, especially with a possibility of seeing the new haka (which was released to the public last week)!

The corporate tickets we got through work last week to see Auckland vs Southland (at the same ground, Eden Park) were fabulous- much free food and drink was had! Shame this weeks tickets had to be paid for (!), but the atmosphere there should make it a good 'un.

T&R x

Some pics...

Above is a view from Tom's (very well positioned) office, looking out towards the Harbour bridge and the North Shore- you can definitely see why they call Auckland the 'city of sails'...

Another view from the office above, looking out towards the city. Our apartment is located to the right of the photo, and my route from home is along the road you can see in the bottom right.

A Home Of Our Own

Here we are in our new home. It's quite lovely and so so central (basically right off the central shopping street in Auckland). Drop us a personal email if you'd like our postal address to send all those well wishing/birthday cards - cheers!


It's been three and a half weeks so far and things are settling down. Tom has been at work for 3 days so far as a Business analyst at Telecom New Zealand and taking under 15 minutes to walk to work is awesome (its ok, awesome is an official business term here!)















Rachel is progressing with her artistic projects and has even managed to get her paint brushes out (and the paints too!)


The weekends have so far mostly been spent socialising and drinking (it would be rude to say no, as we are so central in town!) but we promise to take in a bit more culture over the next few weekends and get out and see the countryside a bit more. Hopefully ski-ing will be on the agenda too!

The two pics of us here are in our apartment and the other one is of Tom's new office. The views from the 14th Floor (Tom's level!) are pretty damn good. Considering it's at one of the highest points in Auckland, you can see for what must be about 15 miles . At least it's something to look at if working gets too much!

So if you want to come visit, please let us know! We are more than ready for guests (with our fully kitted out second bedroom quietly waiting for our first guests to arrive)! :)

Back 2 Skoool

Well it's been just over one week that we've been in Auckland and things are going swimmingly.

First off, we've found a city centre apartment. After everybody telling us "Don't go for the first place you see", we went for the first place we saw. But it's nice, and after seeing other places we could have got for the same money, which we're much smaller and less central, we are very happy with our decision. We move in on Friday 12th August 2005.

Secondly, we had fun on our first weekend. A school disco party on Friday night (see Danni & Mikey in the pic) was followed by Danni's birthday meal @ Estasi in Ponsonby, Auckland.

Thirdly the job search is going well, but perhaps slightly slower than expected. The agencies seem pretty clued up and there seem to be a fair few jobs out there. Knowing our apartment is only a short walk away from most of the central offices helps too - Tom is looking forward to those 8.30 am alarm calls!

There's also a possibility of us both working together with a friend to produce some artistic work for a stall at the Ellerslie Flower Festival in November, which is great. And Tom's supposed to be in training for the Auckland Marathon in October, which isn't so great (for him)!

New Zealand, New Hairdo

We've finally arrived in NZ and it's cooooold winter - buurgh - but the air is clean, the sky is blue and Tom's got a new haircut! I almost cried as his lovely long hippy locks fell to the hairdresser's floor but the finished result is pretty good - what d'ya think?

This photo is after the second cut, as Tom didn't like the first one - not short enough! He's off to join the marines next week ;)

Danni & Mikey have been very generous in putting us up (putting up with us) 'till we find our own abode, so huge thanks and good luck to them!

We're getting on with the job & flat hunting as well which'll keep us busy for a while.

Laters xx