Rather annoyingly we have spent the last few days with little to do in the lakeside town of Taupo. We arrived in the evening a few days ago and straightaway we knew that this was not going to go as planned. The weather has been distinctly colder than the other places we have visited in New Zealand to to it's elevation and position next to a large lake. This has hampered our ability to do anything remotely to do with the outside world. We planned on taking a boat ride out on the lake but all were cancelled due to the weather.
We leave for Auckland at 2:30 this afternoon and then fly to Tokyo on Wednesday at 11:30PM. We are both looking forward to being warm (possibly too warm) in Japan after two weeks of cold weather.
Apologies for the lack of photos on my Flickr stream. The internet cafes have been a little crap at having flash player and I'm not uploading each picture individually. I may just save them all until Tokyo and spent 3 seconds uploading them all in a high speed internet cafe.
Showing posts with label auckland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label auckland. Show all posts
Monday, July 7, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Rain and the Irish
How many Irish pubs must a traveller walk in to before he meets someone who knows Niall?
The answer is quite a few. So we have been in New Zealand for a few days and we have basically spent our time in Irish pubs and getting wet. It has rained every day that we have been here so we have ducked into pubs when we can and they have all been Irish themed. I suppose it would be better if we actually liked Guiness but they are definitely a huge step up over the bars in America.
Although we have been stuck inside alot, we have managed to go up the Sky Tower in Auckland, go to the Auckland museum and go to the Zoo. We were allowed to go into the back of the Red Panda enclosure and feed them because it was too rainy for them to come out. We also fed a giraffe. It gave Jordan a huge lick on the hand... it obviously prefers a shorter lady (Jordan's joke).
We made it into Hamilton yesterday and we've just been hanging round as it's been so wet. We've bought some big jumpers for the time we have left in NZ as it's so cold. We look a bit silly but at least we are warm. The hostel we are staying in is really nice. There was a whole netball team staying last night so we were put into the owners house in a really nice room with a bed so much more comfortable then the ones we have been staying in.
I'm fast running out of time on the net so I'll finish here. I'm trying to upload a few pictures to flickr but it's going really slow (again). I don't think I'll even get to the Alcatraz ones...
The answer is quite a few. So we have been in New Zealand for a few days and we have basically spent our time in Irish pubs and getting wet. It has rained every day that we have been here so we have ducked into pubs when we can and they have all been Irish themed. I suppose it would be better if we actually liked Guiness but they are definitely a huge step up over the bars in America.
Although we have been stuck inside alot, we have managed to go up the Sky Tower in Auckland, go to the Auckland museum and go to the Zoo. We were allowed to go into the back of the Red Panda enclosure and feed them because it was too rainy for them to come out. We also fed a giraffe. It gave Jordan a huge lick on the hand... it obviously prefers a shorter lady (Jordan's joke).
We made it into Hamilton yesterday and we've just been hanging round as it's been so wet. We've bought some big jumpers for the time we have left in NZ as it's so cold. We look a bit silly but at least we are warm. The hostel we are staying in is really nice. There was a whole netball team staying last night so we were put into the owners house in a really nice room with a bed so much more comfortable then the ones we have been staying in.
I'm fast running out of time on the net so I'll finish here. I'm trying to upload a few pictures to flickr but it's going really slow (again). I don't think I'll even get to the Alcatraz ones...
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
America
I seemed to have lost Tuesday. It's quite a strange feeling but my week so far has consisted of a Monday and the first of Wednesday... Tuesday hasn't happened for me. It's a strange feeling.
We have arrived safely in New Zealand. We have booked into our hostel which seems pretty decent. The owner is friendly and was happy to chat about the city for a while... it turns out he has visited Milton Keynes before which I thought was funny if slightly odd.
As not much has happened here, I thought it would be a good opportunity to write about our last few days in America and our overall thoughts on the place. We spent our last night in the Venice beach area. The hostel was alright although we were in a 3 bed dorm so we had to share with one other person. It worked out okay but we felt a bit nerdy when we were in bed by eleven and we was off out drinking some more. Our excuse was that we had to check out in the morning and we had already had a fairly heavy night the night before at a bar called the Powerhouse in Hollywood. That was quite a fun night. We ended up talking to a rocker couple called Vic and Brook (how American can you get?) and drinking 3$ pints.
Venice beach was a really fun place during the day. It was very hot so we sat by the beach and I got in a few times. There was a real festival atmosphere with stalls selling all kinds of things and street performers along the promenade. We had some dinner in the evening and had a walk up the beach as the sun set. After popping back the hostel, we decided to run out to get some bottled water - our room was ridiculously hot. The place was a little scarier at night. There were gangs of people hanging out everywhere and the lively atmosphere of the day was long gone. We promptly bought water and retired to bed!
We spent our last day in L.A. just lounging on the beach and having a long lunch in an Italian restaurant just off the sea front.
It has been a strange but fun couple of weeks. Although it may have seemed like we have been moaning about a lot on this blog, we have had some really fun times and after some initial feelings of disappointment when in L.A. we have decided that we would definitely come back. I think L.A. is maybe hyped up a bit too much. Hollywood is touristy and a bit rough and Sunset Strip consists of very few bars that are really far away from each other.
San Francisco, on the other hand, was a great place. You can be a tourist and do all the touristy things or you can just hang out in bars and soak up the atmosphere. There are a lot more places to just sit in SF than L.A.
I really should sleep now as I didn't sleep on the plane (how do people do it?) but I am wide awake. I think I'm currently on about 26 hours but I could be screwing my maths with all the odd time zone business. We have much better access to the net here so I will hopefully update this blog a little more over the next few days. I may even chance hogging all the bandwidth and upload a few pictures to Flickr.
We have arrived safely in New Zealand. We have booked into our hostel which seems pretty decent. The owner is friendly and was happy to chat about the city for a while... it turns out he has visited Milton Keynes before which I thought was funny if slightly odd.
As not much has happened here, I thought it would be a good opportunity to write about our last few days in America and our overall thoughts on the place. We spent our last night in the Venice beach area. The hostel was alright although we were in a 3 bed dorm so we had to share with one other person. It worked out okay but we felt a bit nerdy when we were in bed by eleven and we was off out drinking some more. Our excuse was that we had to check out in the morning and we had already had a fairly heavy night the night before at a bar called the Powerhouse in Hollywood. That was quite a fun night. We ended up talking to a rocker couple called Vic and Brook (how American can you get?) and drinking 3$ pints.
Venice beach was a really fun place during the day. It was very hot so we sat by the beach and I got in a few times. There was a real festival atmosphere with stalls selling all kinds of things and street performers along the promenade. We had some dinner in the evening and had a walk up the beach as the sun set. After popping back the hostel, we decided to run out to get some bottled water - our room was ridiculously hot. The place was a little scarier at night. There were gangs of people hanging out everywhere and the lively atmosphere of the day was long gone. We promptly bought water and retired to bed!
We spent our last day in L.A. just lounging on the beach and having a long lunch in an Italian restaurant just off the sea front.
It has been a strange but fun couple of weeks. Although it may have seemed like we have been moaning about a lot on this blog, we have had some really fun times and after some initial feelings of disappointment when in L.A. we have decided that we would definitely come back. I think L.A. is maybe hyped up a bit too much. Hollywood is touristy and a bit rough and Sunset Strip consists of very few bars that are really far away from each other.
San Francisco, on the other hand, was a great place. You can be a tourist and do all the touristy things or you can just hang out in bars and soak up the atmosphere. There are a lot more places to just sit in SF than L.A.
I really should sleep now as I didn't sleep on the plane (how do people do it?) but I am wide awake. I think I'm currently on about 26 hours but I could be screwing my maths with all the odd time zone business. We have much better access to the net here so I will hopefully update this blog a little more over the next few days. I may even chance hogging all the bandwidth and upload a few pictures to Flickr.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Holidaaay!
My girlfriend, Jordan, and I booked flights for our holiday today. We are flying to L.A., then Auckland, then Tokyo, then Hong Kong and finally back to the U.K. We're going for about two months in total and spending about two weeks in each city. I haven't been outside of Europe in over seven years so it's going to be a bit of an adventure. We now just need to book hostels and find out if we can stay with people while we're out there... Oh, and save up some spending money.
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