Done.

One last day in Sydney. Not much time, but enough time to eat the BEST pancakes on the planet at Pancakes on the Rocks but only after seeing the new Russel Crowe Robin Hood. Then race the rain to the train station. Boarding a plane for 14 is not much fun soaking wet....and then you see Vegas from the skies!

Tim's Birthday (May 3)!

May 3, 2010 (Tims Birthday!!!)
Gym, showered, hair done (for the first time in FOREVER) All had coffee, and we were out the door, in the car, and on the way to the Blue Mountains. Mom in the front seat today, for the first timte since we got here, its funny that its so weird for her. Amusing at least. Time has gone super quick, its 11. The roads are very regular. Two lane, towns every once in awhile, trees lining the road so you don’t really see much.

We got to Echo Point, aka the Three Sisters. The Three Sisters is a rock formation that has three stacks up. But the kicker is the area right next to it. It’s a MASSIVE open space for miles and miles. You can see forever, and you are super high up, you look down and its like you are on a high rise, but the ground is just the tops of trees. Katoomba was next. It was cute, it had a block of cafes anad stores and bakeshops. We lapped it a few times, and we ended up at a place called Mountain Ridges. It was very much a locals type place. Like Cup of Joe with food. We all had a huge pile of the best scrambled eggs I have ever had. Everyone agreed that they were amazing. Fluffy, perfectly salted, not overcooked. Just amazing. It was a fantastic lunch. Best decision we could have made. At the bakery we got some dessert, Mom asked what a Lamington was (we have seen bunches of those in NZ) and it’s a sponge cake soaked in a chocolate sauce and then covered in coconut. That’s what she got, and my trial bite of it was yummy.

There wasn’t much else in the blue mountains that Mom wanted to do. And we hadn’t hit up the Victoria Building or the Strand Arcade yet, so we headed back to Sydney to do those. We went straight back to the Victoria building, and ended up paying $30 in parking, which is crazy, but got even crazier when we got inside and Mom admitted that she had only wanted to see the inside architecture and didn’t actually care about doing any shopping inside. I mean, I don’t think she could have shopped there upon further looking, since it was all super high end shopping, but that’s pretty hefty parking to look at a Royal Clock inside the mall and looking at the building structure.From there, we walked to the Strand, another mall that Mom wanted to see the inside of. This one was more Gothic/iron bar-y, so it was more arty and cool looking to see at least. After perusing the inside, we went to the Billabong store across the street. They had super cute stuff, and again I got super frustrated that they got to have such super cute clothes and yet they are so pricey that I can’t get any of them. Tim did get an awesome shirt for his birthday though.

We got back to the car, paid the ridiculous pricing, and talked about how high tech the parking garage was. There was a light over every stall that glowed red if it was filled and green if it was open, so you could look down the whole aisle of cars and see if there was an open one instead of having to drive down the whole thing before moving up a level.

The next few hours involved stealing internet from McDs in the lobby, attempting to work out (whole story there) and then an argument about the dinner for the night. Tim and I were completely happy eating the tons of leftovers that we had, or going to the grocery store, but Mom was super determined to go out for dinner. Halfway to Coles to supplement what we already had, I remembered that there was an Irish pub in the area, so we wanted to look for that, and hoped to find it. And there you go, on the next block, we found Scruffy Murphy. We went upstairs to the restaurant and went through the menu, figuring out what we wanted before ordering at the bar. Mom had the fish and chips, Tim had beef burger, and I got a side salad. The fish was fantastic, the burger had an egg on it, but was super tasty, and my salad was perfect. It had huge chunks of veggies and had a vinegar dressing. We relaxed a bit longer as they each got a second beer/wine before walking back. Tim opened up his birthday cards. The best one from my parents, “The dingo ate my birthday cake!.” We drank the honeywine, and I put apple pieces in my glass, which tasted delcious after soaking a bit.

Bondi Beach, Harbor Cruise, Curry Beef! (May 2nd)

Sunday, May 2, 2010
I woke up on my own at 6:45. Mom was clearly wide awake as well, but she said she had plenty of things to do, and the market didn’t open until 9 anyway, so I was at the gym by 7:30. Mom was a life saver and had brought hair scissors with her, so the morning brought about haircuts for both Tim and I.

Paddy’s Market was a huge bust. It was all these crappy booths with really cheap stuff and clothes and electronics accessories. Really not at all what we expected. So we headed to Bondi Beach. We made it to the front strip of Bondi, but ended up getting stuck because of some sort of parade that was heading down our street. We waited a few minutes, but then ended up flipping a uturn and going down the side streets, Mom oohing and aahing at the beach the whole way. It was a perfect day for beaching. A little overly hot, but a breeze, perfect sun. There were a ton of surfers out, and they were super fun to watch. Hot, yes, but they were too far away too really tell that of the ones actually surfing. Mom was just as enthralled by them and kept trying to take the perfect picture. Mom had thought there would be chairs to lounge on at the beach, so we sat on a bench and watched for a total of two minutes before she claimed she was bored, and we walked back up to the food strip street. Tim got fish and chips again, I got a mango smoothee for right now, and the sweet potato salad to take with me since I felt it was still a little early to be eating lunch. Mom got a chicken cesar salad from the same place. I had a bit of tims fish and chips, and mom had some too and decided that she wanted more fries. She barely ate any of her salad before we looped around and dropped her off to get another order of fries.

We did a scenic loop around Bondi. Stopping for mom to take pictures, all of us eating way too many French fries, but they are just the best fries ever and nearly impossible to stop eating them. Back towards the Sydney CBD, did some Souvenoir shopping as we waited for our Harbor Cruise.

We waited by the docks to load the boat, and behind us came the stereotypical, rude, everything is about them, group of Asians, complete with know it all leader. I mentioned to Mom not to get trampled by the Asians and the Exercise Exhibition guy in front of us heard me and commiserated with us. We boarded our 2:30 vessel, and in the process of going up the first ramp, mom took a tumble. We were petrified that that was the end of our day, if not the end of the trip, but she got up, seemed ok, and we got on. The Aussie was concerned about her and kept talking to us, and we made a new friend and he was very chatty for the first 20 minutes of the boat ride.

The sun was bright and shining, unlike the day before, which was realy nice because we got some really good pictures of Mom by the Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. As well as Tim chillin in his aviators and v neck. The ride was only 75 minutes, but it felt like a few hours. I flipped through Mom's Australia travel book, not finding much more than what Mom had already on the itinerary.

Post boat, we found a wine store. They even had bottles from Clare Valley. Dropped bags off at the hotel, went to the mall to catch up with news back home (internet style) and look for a brush for Mom. It was a little after 6 by the time we left the Mall, and we all knew that if Mom went up to the hotel room, she would never make it out to dinner. We walked up and down the Chinatown block, and every few feet there were these women shoving menus into our faces asking us to come sit. It was really rather weird. Picked one and ordered, when we got the food, clearly Mom and I ordered poorly. But Tim’s curry hot pot beef dish was the killer. The curry sauce was amazing. We each had rice and put the sauce on it, and I even tried the beef too. It was amazing. Well worth eating there all by itself. The waiter was kind of strange though, didn’t know much English, but was thoughtful enough to bring over an extra chair so that we could put our bags on it while we ate. When he brought the check, we also received two thin slices of watermelon and a Sandie like cookie. Yum yum.

May Day! Mommy Day!

The day that everything turned happy!

Saturday, May 1, 2010
5:30 wake up and off to the terminal and waited for mom. Once the screen said that her plane had landed, it took mom 50 minutes to come out of the arrivals gate. I was getting worried! We stood there forever looking at every person that came out thinking it was her. It was super awesome to see her though, everyone was really happy. We waited in line with her at the Hertz rental. We got the car, and it was so awesome, the inside of the car was spotless. SO so different than the crap van we had been living in. It was beautiful.

Good Living Market first. We lucked out with parking right across the street, and it was a really big market, biggest one that we had seen yet. They had virtually every type of food stand that you could want. All sorts of foods, prepared and take home, ready meals, flowers, spreads, everything, and quite a few of the stalls had samples. We all looked for the lunch that we wanted to purchase, and I wanted figs, but you could only buy them in the trays, so that was disappointing. We ended up buying a bag of apples, olive bread, and a super super soft cheese. Mom bought some jerky, and I got strawberry tarts for dessert.

Justice and Police Museum. We almost had to park in a garage that was $35 a day, which was just insane, but we found street parking thankfully. We can’t believe how expensive parking is though. Its almost not worth having a car, at least in Sydney. And of course, Mom is surprised at the cost of things (besides parking) despite my attempts at trying to tell her before she was even here exactly how expensive this place is. But of course, no one believed me. The Justice and Police Museum was interesting, the individual stories were cool, but there was a lot on the gambling/casinos/prostituion rings, which could be super interesting, but the way they were presented was too wordy and hard to really grasp. It was just different than I expected.
Once we finished there, we walked down to the wharf. Mom got her chance to see the Sydney Bridge and the Opera House. As soon as we got to the Opera House, Mom turned into a little girl. It was really cute. She was giddy and prancing all over the place. She was taking pictures every few feet like she wouldn’t ever remember what it looks like. It was somewhat disappointing that we couldn’t go inside, but she was still in utter glee and kept saying how she couldn’t believe that she was there.
Hyde Park Barracks next. On the way, we made a wrong turn, and had to go all the way over bridge, and then get back, which took an extra half an hour. The Barracks were three levels, each floor slightly different. They had interesting set ups of views of things, like a table set for dinner, and then a video camera shooting down the images of food and hands eating as if the people were there at the table. Also a section on the orphan girls that had been housed there, and what it was like for them. I really enjoyed it overall. In the courtyard, there was a shelter and a plaque for the three kitties that lived there at the Barracks, only one was home, but it was super cute and loved the snuggles I was so willing to give it.

Outside the Barracks in the park, there were bagpipes and a huge group of people. We watched them for awhile, thinking that they would eventually march down the street, but as soon as we saw that they were Socialist protesters, Mom was more than willing to go back to the car. We got to The Rocks area, and saw that the same market as yesterday was going on again. It was hard to decide on what to get for lunch with so many options looking super tasty. So Mom and I shared a cheese and spinach crepe/quesadilla thing, which was awesome. And then we each got one kebab, hers beef and mine chicken, although I should have had beef since mine had only two pieces of meat and one of those was rather gnarly. But overall it was tasty, it was like Chinese food on a stick. Tim had a KILLER hamburger. I could have had a whole one of those all by myself. There really wasn’t any non restaurant seating, so we ate while sitting on these big planters, not exactly easy, but it was better than standing and trying to juggle the plates.

We went and found Hillsong church, so that we would know exactly where it was later and wouldn’t have to be wandering around in the dark. There was a Cole’s right next door, so instead of going back downtown and walking or parking in an expensive lot, we parked in the free lot right in front of the door. On to the hotel, which was huge driving drama. GPS wasn’t seeming to take us there at all, so I had to follow the map, which was really hard because it looked easy enough on the map, but what WASN’T on the map was all of the one way streets that we couldn’t go down, that we needed to go down. I eventually got us there, and Tim only went through one red light to do it.

Only one bed, and mom and Tim immediately started fighting about who would be the one sleeping on the floor. Tim eventually was the one that won. There was a note saying that the gym was closed until the 3rd (the day we leave), but I went to check anyway, and it was at least functional. Got to the church in record time of about ten minutes. It looked like a shady esque neighborhood, but the building on the inside was clean and bright and gorgeous. You could tell immediately that it was going to be super awesome and that I wish I could go there on a regular basis. The speaker was super intelligent and was one of those people, that you just wanted to listen to. His talk made me want to take theology classes from him. It went over the 90 minute mark and I thought my poor mommy was going to pass out. It was 4:30am her time. Back to the hotel for a brief dinner and bed for Mom.

Bussing Around Sydney. (A29)

Thursday, April 29, 2010

The morning found our medical issue getting worse, I was getting really nervous about it. Dealing with our travel insurance and going to a doctor and finding a doctor, and figuring out how to pay and all that jazz is not something I want to be dealing with when I am supposed to be touring Sydney. But it was a hgue debate about going to the doctor because we don’t want to affect Mom when she gets here, and/or be completely incapacitated by the time she arrives, making the last two weeks totally miserable. We decided at the least to look up our medical travel insurance, just to see what we even could do. After looking at our policy, it was looking grim that a doctors visit would even be covered. Due to the fact that its not life threatening, and we had no idea if it would leave permanent injury or whatnot since we didn’t even know what it was.

We figure out some prescriptions that could help us out, and seeing as though we aren’t in the uber restrictive US, all of them can be got OTC here. If we couldn’t get them, we would go to the doctor, but there was no sense paying the extra if we could just do it ourselves.

Feeling accomplished, we found the place selling the Hop On Hop Off bus tickets, and bought ours. Sitting on the top, the weather was awesome, not having to drive, seeing everything and being super comfortable, nothing really jumped out at us as worth getting off the bus for. We rode the bus around a good portion of the loop, Tim getting hit in the head with a branch (hard too), but got off when we hit the rocks to go to the Information Center.

We walked to the Starbucks next door, ordered filtered coffee, but had to wait for them to make it, since they didn’t have regular coffee made, which I found really funny.

The bus was a great way to see the stuff, without Tim having to drive, and we could just look at everything and drive around and hear certain information about places. We arrived pretty quickly at the Bondi Beach stop, right in front of the beach. Between it, and a whole strip of stores and eateries that lined the road in front of it. I went into the first store right off the bus.

We shopped around for awhile, Billabong was first, and it had amazing stuff. Stuff I wanted really bad, and not just for myself, but for Tim too. Everything was just so ridiculously expensive, I couldn’t justify $100 for a shirt. It’s the same brand, I just don’t understand why NONE of it is available in the states. It is so frustrating. I want to dress cute. I want to dress my style, but at home, I cant do that. And neither can Tim. Argh! This town is full of real surfers who barely wear real clothes, and they are the town that get the super awesome clothing stores? I guess it makes sense with that kind of style, but still! Not fair!

Back to the front street of Bondi Beach. It didn’t take long to find the places that we each wanted to go. Tim got the fish chips and I got a mango surpise smoothee next door. I planned on getting the fruit bowl, but that was more expensive than the whole smoothee. I had some of Tims fish and chips that were absolutely amazing. At the smoothee place though, they had tons of awesome side salads. Made me really want the cucumber feta tomato Italian one. As well as the pumpkin, sweet potato, sun dried tomato salad. Yum.

Back to the hotel to start some laundry, hit up the internet a bit, and shop at Coles for our Masala chicken and salad dinner. We tried to figure out what to do tomorrow, and in what order, which causes a bit of drama. Medicated, we head to bed and I wonder how all of those people in New Zealand walk around barefoot all the time. At gas stations, on the streets, restaurants, everywhere we went, city or small town, there were people that were barefoot, just walking around no big deal. There was even one guy downtown Wellington that was running in no shoes. It was just ridiculous. Ouch. And gross.

April 26th. Chillin Bikram Style.

Well kids, you certainly spoke up! In quite the numbers. So as promised, I shall give you more!

Monday, April 26, 2010
Lazy morning, except for Tim trying kwana. He didn’t hate it, but I thought it tasted like a nasty pickle, so we just left it at the hotel.
We went straight to the Hamilton post office, and it was clear the lady was not only miserable that she had to deal with us, but that she thought we were insane for spending that kind of money on sending luggage. It took about 20 minutes, she had to lug or suitcases around to her side, and pull them up onto the scale on the counter, I felt super bad, then she had to deal with tagging them, which was quite a bit more work than it seemed it should have been. But now its done with. Dealt with. Yay.
A sidenote about this country’s bathrooms. No paper towels. Shocker. These people never have paper towels. Its so strange. Its like, they are so environment conscious. Lights are rare. Like, bathrooms will have one bulb in the big area and that’s it. And you are supposed to turn it off when you leave. Or no lights at all! No paper towels. Sometimes hand dryers. Some don’t work. And even half the time there’s soap. Its aggravating how green people are. Plus the whole, put the key in the motel lock in order to put power to your room. Aka, no charging anything while you are gone. Or EVERY electrical outlet having a switch to have to turn on. No heat in most buildings. Just kind of sick of it.
25 minutes outside of Auckland, Tim figured I should drive since it was easy road, and he didn’t think I would want city roads. But really, highway driving isn’t even weird since you are totally separated from the other direction. But I did anyway. It was totally fine, the hard part was keeping it under the speed limit. After 10 minutes, Tim was already bored, so I pulled off at the next exit and we traded again.
We got into Auckland, had really no plan, so we plugged in the War Museum first to go check out their gift shop again. On the way, we noticed that we were really close to one of the Yoga places I was interested in, so we got there and I poked my head in.
Tim bought the NZ flag, and after a Subway lunch, we also tried a Pinky bar for the first time. Chocolate around a marshmallow base (pink) with a nonstringy, more jellyesque caramel strip on top. It was delicious, I’m glad we just now found them, cause I would eat them all the time.
More random wanderings through the city, stopped at several stores looking for the “perfect” All Blacks shirt for Tim. We wanted to go to the store we found the first time we were there, but we couldn’t seem to find its exact location, so we circled for probably at least 20 minutes. We hit the same 6 block radius of the Auckland CBD at least ten times. It was ridiculous
I figured out today that gas is $US4.88 a gallon.
I was still nervous about Bikram, but I was determined to try it, at least once, and this was the best time. Tim dropped me off, and I headed up. It turned out that the instructor went to Augustana in the Quad Cities, so that was really super random. Stood around outside the door til someone else went in, he told me to be at the wall not at the mirror, so I did, but it was pretty full already. Little did I know that that was only about a third of the class. There were at least 25 people there, if not more. Everyone was laying down, so I laid down too and it felt like I was laying there for 45 minutes, but it couldn’t have been more than 10. It was also good that I was good to go on his American accent. The warm up freaked me out, it was this weird breathing exercise that involved back bends and throwing our heads back. It hurt my neck immediately. Plus there were lots of poses that Carissa would have freaked out on, it was techniques that went exactly against what we should be doing. Like the toes and heels together always. There was one drink break the whole class, and I thought I was going to die at a few parts. And with no clock, it felt like it was going on forever. He kept telling us to push past the pain and just keep bending or stretching or pulling. But when your muscles are THAT hot (105 for bikram) then you are totally going to pull or tear something by pulling that much, so that was weird. Also, we did split poses, and no one else seemed to be sliding at all, but I was all over the place, but they were sweating the same amount! I was literally soaked at the end of class. We did a bunch of poses, but did every pose twice. We did a group of 2 or 3 things, then repeated them, the next group, repeat, all the way through for 90 minutes.
After class, we found the camp, The sign on the shower said limited hot water to ¾ turn. I turned that sucker up to full heat. And then 6-7-8 minutes in, the lights kicked off. They must be on a timer. I hate this country. That’s so uncool. Im showering, soapy, wet, and the lights are ALL the way at the other end. I at least had enough glow from the mens room to finish the shower, and by the time those cut out, I was in a towel so I could go turn mine back on. Its just ridiculous.
We found a Subway for dinner (shocker) but right next to it on the GPS was a Burger Fuel, something I had wanted to be trying, so we made the trip. Another Subway right next to it, screaming at me to be healthy, but I said screw it. I had some sort of chicken sandwich that was HUGE. My extended palm and fingers did not cover the size of the bun. It took us awhile to get our food though. But mine was killer. It was chunks of chicken, a bbq/ketchup/A1 hybrid, brie, bacon (the English thick awesome kind that Ihad tim eat half of), lettuce and tomato. I nixed the aoli like a smart girl would. I also tossed the top half of the bun and probably a good third of the bottom bun. We shared Kumara fries, which Wikipedia says it’s a sweet potato, and I believe its in that family, but that is no American sweet potato, it is DELICIOUS.

Top Trio of Food Discoveries.

Oh we just can't get enough, we just can't get enough!

Tim & Clare's fave dinner. Chicken Tikka Masala. Eaten three nights in a row, and totally could have been more. Looks like cat puke, tastes like Indian awesome.
Clare's fave fruit. Fresh fig. The healthier fig newton!
Tim's fave candy. Jaffas. Orange coated chocolate balls, crunchy choco-citrus!
Clare's fave dessert. Tim Tams. Seriously chocotastic.

Saturday, April 24th: Happy Day!!

Saturday, April 24, 2010
There were so many people at the the Rotorua Farmers Market that we had trouble finding a spot to park, but really, that just makes total sense. The regular stores sell nothing healthy, everything is full badness levels, and the produce, while decent quality, is really expensive, but at the market, produce is much cheaper, just as good of quality if not better, AND the selection is much much greater. This one was a little different than last weeks, there weren’t as much other goods being sold, but there was a flea market aspect to it. There was still grand stalls of fruits and vegetables, one stand of breads, one of coffee, one jams, one dessert. It was fun to walk around and see all the different things. There was quite a bit that I didn’t know what it was, but there was also one stall that was selling Durian.
The takeaway food (which we planned our dinner on) wasn’t as easily portable as the first one. There was lots of local foods, mango chicken rice, fried breads, hot sandwiches. The two that we did take advantage of was the waffle/crepe stand. We shared a maple syrup waffle. It was perfect size to share, hot and crispy, and since it was meant to be carried, no plates, which had me worried about the syrup, but he carefully squirted a tiny bit into each square. And then Tim bought 5 kabobs (3chicken/2lamb) for part of the dinner later. We got spinach, mango, and red pepper to add to our lunch/dinner.
One of the towns between Rotorua and Hamilton was called Cambridge, and we drove right by their Saturday market, so of course we had to stop and look for the ever evading fresh figs. No figs, but a really good cheese sample, and we bought date/walnut bread (very hearty), Tim got a steak Cornish pie for dinner, and I got a strawberry brioche for dessert to my fruit/veg dinner. Two farmers markets by noon? Well done!
We arrived at Hamilton around 11, and wish we had known about it right away. This was the place for us to live. Both of us said it right away. Neither one of us had read a single thing about it, but that’s shocking because a town of this much culture, and of this size, with this nice of a downtown district, but still looked totally livable and workable, should be ranted and raved about totally. Add in perfect sunny day with a light breeze, so that was we drove around with the windows down, we were in total bliss. Having spent so much time in the car, that’s really saying something, but the weather was perfect, there was tons of stuff to look at.
We got out and walked down to Barton Street so I could take a picture of the graffiti I had seen earlier, of a robot lazer beaming a cat. It was actually kind of cute in an odd way. Walked around a bit more, but got to the car around 1, decided to go at least attempt to check in to the hotel early. And were greeted into our awesome Bella Vista ground floor haven of awesome. We pulled everything inside, and I mean EVERYTHING. The windows of the van all got rolled down all the way, sun and moon roof open, and it had the next 4 hours to air out as best as it could. There was a great breeze, and the air was really warm from the bright ever shining sun today. As we worked in the hotel room even, we had the door slid all the way open and the window in the bathroom open.
We kept the laundry going all afternoon, the dryer didn’t work very well, so we snagged a drying rack and put it in our room. There were clothes everywhere. We were busy simultaneously doing laundry, updating the internet, unpacking and sorting all of our gear. Snacking on occasional pieces of the date bread. Next thing I knew it was 5pm. I did 15 minutes of abs on the floor while Tim continued to work, and then we headed out for a walk right at sunset. The weather was still nice though. We walked rather aimlessly, just in the general direction of “stuff” just a stroll.
So we saw a Countdown and picked up some raw chicken, peppers, and tomatoes to use with our leftover taco seasoning. I have also decided that these people have a liquor and gambling problem. The sheer vastness and hugeness of all the Liquor Saves everywhere. And there seem to be Lotto stations in every possible nook and cranny. Not machines, but actual kiosks with people that you buy Lotto Tickets from. And there are usually at least one or two people at them, no matter the size of the town.
I had brilliantly found illegal versions of ‘Til Death, and Modern Family for while we packed. Once we were close, I called a break for our ice cream and to watch Survivor (illegally of course). I showered, and with the water pressure of a raging river rapids, came out very clean, but feeling like a drown dog. But I would take that hard of water pressure any day, put away the last of our stuff and Tim was in bed by 11:30.

Russell with a side of syrup please.

It's impossible to come to Australia and not see a Russell Crowe movie. No matter how much you think he's a pompous butthead who can't act, right?

So there. I saw Robin Hood in Aussie Land. I took one for the team.

That being said, it wasn't as bad as I expected. His crew of merrymen made it worth it. Mainly, the Canadian. :)

And now I go to consume pancakes where British convicts were once sent to do manual labor....tasty social retribution!

Best of Van Cuisine.

Thursday, April 22, 2010
I was awoken with a text message from mom saying they had gotten a call from US Bank saying my card had been suspended and that some of the charges had been declined due to the suspicious activity. Now, I had looked at my account last night, and my supposed pending items (that were first in line to be considered “declined” were things like the Maori tix, the Cave tix, our hotel in Sydney)….bad news.
I was less than a happy camper when I called, the bank said that it was the Emirates flights that had flagged it. Which is ridiculous, it’s an airline. Of all the options, that’s what gets it? Stupid.
Made it to the ferry with plenty time, and were told to get into the line with the van. Got in the line, and it looks like you sit in the car until its time to load. You can get out, but I have nothing to do outside the car!
Aboard the ferry, found a nice comfy spot, had some toast and banana for breakfast and Tim is heading outside, how, I don’t know, its FREEZING. I’m sure if I was properly dressed I might be ok, but I only have my light green jacket. However, I was slightly more prepared than last time and at least have on long sleeves and a hooded sweatshirt. Brr. And these rude people go outside or come back from inside, and leave the door open. Its like people, I know you aren’t sitting up here, so you don’t care. But its cold, shut the frickin door!
While planning our Sydney excursion, a german girl came in and exclaimed something to her friends and they all ran outside, so naturally, we all did too. There were dolphins swimming along the boat!
We hit Hastings at about 4, found the Rush Munroe ice cream gardens. Pretty much just an ice cream shop, that part was a let down, and then further a let down when I got passion fruit, and Tim got hokey pokey.
On the way to Napier we saw the sign for the pet barn that had kittens and puppies. A stop was a must! Napier Town center was too far away to walk to, from the camp that we picked so we drove into town and parked outside the Countdown grocery store. I saw the Mad Butcher shop next door and after our awful meat experience the night before, we decided to check that out. It was actually really cool. Small, but TONS of meat. Coolers and coolers of every type of meat in every different cut and various marinades. Including tripe and oxtail. Other organs too. But it was awesome. I wish we had one like that. We decided that we were going to stick with our plan on taco seasoned chicken with red peppers. When we left the internet cafe, we saw downtown Napier just totally shut down for the night. At like 6:30pm. It’s a whole country thing! Nothing is open. Still outrageous. It was a beautiful night and we would have loved to just walk around looking at things.

After dinner, I made dessert using a can of strawberries with juice, simmered it with some more of my strawberry jelly that I had, a packet of citrus jelly, and then added a cut up banana into it. The banana was in too long (I didn’t realize how long it would take to reduce) and it broke down quite a bit, but in the end it was like soupy jam, but tasted awesome.
By 8:30 we were super bored. We were half an hour in to Astro Boy, but watching it in the kitchen on the laptop, unable to do anything else was just rather obnoxious. It was too early for bed, internet was expensive, nothing to do! We ended up getting ready for bed, setting up the van, and planning to finish the movie in the van, and not more than half an hour later, out like a light by 10:30!

Food for Thought...or Thoughts on Food!

Sultanas over raisins. Sweeter, but in a different nonsweet way.

There is something about bread in the Southern Hemisphere, can't be beat. Including Turkish.

New Zealand apples are FAR superior to Australia apples.

Fresh figs, while intriguing to eat, are delicious.

If you go to Starbucks, expect to have to wait to get filtered coffee. Even in the middle of the day, you are always the first one to have ordered it, so there is none made.

People don't eat healthy breakfast, in either country. Breakfast foods beyond muffins and pastries are nearly impossible to find.

April 16th. A million ways to be transported in 24 hours.

Friday, April 16, 2010

-Alarm went off at 5:50,
-Calling a cab ended up being the smartest decision we made that day because it was raining. At first it just looked like a mist, but then it was definitely a heavy rain. We would have been wet, hot, sweaty, and utterly miserable if we had walked all the way to the ferry docks.
-The Bluebridge Ferry” One section had some small couches, others had airline seats all facing a tv, there was an outside looking deck, but with the rain, no point. We were ready to sit in the airline seats, but then I went to the café and saw that there were small tables with cushy chairs around them.
-We gave in to the glorious smells of breakfast, Tim left to go order eggs and toast. Absolutely delicious. 4 slices of toast, and scrambled eggs that Tim shared. The only jelly was a “Breakfast Marmelade” but it totally worked for me. More a citrus jelly than anything else.
-Tim just left to go sit in the airline style seats, I think he’s going to try and sleep, but he doesn’t seem to be doing to well with the pitching back and forth, and at times its almost a circular motion
-Riding on a train for 6+ hours is far less enjoyable when you have two people sitting directly across from you that want to chat the whole time….Which is fine for awhile, I actually would love to hear tidbits and facts that I didn’t know, but I also wanted to take a break from looking at all the passing mountains that I have seen for a week straight from the car
-The salt farms were quite interesting, they are big fields of water waiting to dry up to harvest the salt. Some of them were even pink.
-THERE WERE SEALS!
-If you are ever in Christchurch, stay at Hotel SO. It’s like you are sleeping in a futuristic spaceship pod. Complete with the ability to shower in 7 different colors, and blue glow lights under the bed. And the best hotel gym this side of the equator, and a HUGE laundry room for cheap. Adoration of the Hotel SO.
-Christchurch = Boston in New Zealand.
-Cathedral Square is a copy of Copley, and the blocks off of it are so totally filled with Bostonian crazies.
-Poppy Thai = Thai food that needs to be concentrated on, as to not INHALE in one glorious My Way Satay, bite.
-And to end the day, I hit the gym at 11pm….*sigh*

My bed glows blue.

Ok, so I meant to post a decent post tonight, since we are about to embark on a two week, sleep in a van, eat in a van, breathe van, adventure. I am sure we will get internet at some point, but don't know for how long or actually when the next post will be able to be. Thus the desire for a glorious post tonight, but that didn't happen, and I blame the hotel. It is amazing. Beyond amazing. Our room has free wireless, its like a spaceship, the bathroom is an opaque pod, and you can shower in 5 different colors of lights, there is a wall remote for the 10+ light features, the bottom of the bed glows blue...AND THERE IS A GYM. Not just any gym, but a huge glorious gym and sauna. Needless to say, thats where I spent my evening as Tim did laundry in the hotel sweet laundry room that even provided the soap!

But today was pretty different than the other days so far. We were up at 5:45 in order to make it to our 8am ferry across the sound from the North Island to the South Island, and then 5.5 hours on the ghetto train to Christchurch where we pick up our van tomorrow. I totally dig Christchurch though. Its what i thought Wellington was going to be. Love it. Boston, Denver, and a little bit of something new all rolled into one. Hint of Amsterdam. We ate at Poppy Thai for dinner. I could have eaten that dinner all week. I cleaned my plate, and for those that know me...thats unheard of, unless its dessert....it was awesome. And then top that of with a great hour and a half in the gym. Dig. Now its 2:10am and I hope I can drag my butt back down there before we take off tomorrow.


These pictures were take two days ago (I think two...) at Castlepoint Lighthouse. An hour totally in the wrong direction, but when you see the other pictures, you will understand that it was totally the right move.

Now for some trivia of the day:

You don't say red pepper or green pepper here. Its all called Capsicum.

Maori pronounce "wh" like an f.

Kiwi plants can grow 6 inches on a hot day.

Kiwi plants are either male or female.

Breakfast Marmelade is lemony orange jelly.

Filtered coffee, = real coffee.

Fresh = not toasted sandwich (mainly from Subway on our budget)