Unique decorations at Bunnings.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Unique decorations at Bunnings.
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Day trip north of Auckland, checking out more beaches and another bake-house, all within an hours drive of the big city. Omaha is added to our short-list of favorites!
We stayed at Bucklands 5 years ago & I remembered liking the walkway to Half Moom Bay Marina. We drove there this morning & had a nice walk. Saw some kind of black bird (maybe immature) on the mangrove shore. Also a kingfisher posed for the camera. We found the motel we stayed at last time, & then went to see the Eastern Beach Esplanade. I learned about the word judder a few weeks back while bathroom reading my copy of the Kiwi Dictionary, but today was the first time I saw the word used publicly. Also known as camel humps. Speed bumps for me. Toppes in Mexico! A good judder-bar really shakes up the car if taken too quickly!
Drove inland to Panmure for lunch on the way home. Another win for noodles! An annual event in our neighborhood. Good market. I rate it highly in lots of categories. Variety of crafts. Glass, metal, wood, pottery, fabrics, food. FOOD!
Lots of ideas & inspiration for future project! We got this little booklet shortly after we arrived in NZ in early September, and I've been waiting for the Labour Day weekend to get here so I go down to the docks for a look. Here's what I saw.
The day plan was simple - bus downtown for lunch and have a look at the ships at the docks. We did that - with some embellishments!
The view from our Kohimarama bus stop was remarkable in that there was not a cloud in the sky. Our end of the line bus stop downtown was also remarkable today. The streets were blocked by a crowd protesting events in Chile. We did go to the docks to see the ships (separate post) and then decided to go back for another sampling at the food court in Ponsonby that we tried a couple of weeks ago. We chose the Inner link bus, but took it in the opposite direction than last time. So, more pictures out of dirty bus windows, but I concentrated on different things. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story (including lunch). Our first sausage sizzle at a New Zealand Bunnings. Tastier sausage & cheaper than our many Australian experiences! OOOOH....
Oh yah, we went there to visit the garden center. Lots of varieties of fruiting trees & shrubs we don't see in Canada. It rained most of the way from New Plymouth back to Auckland, but we had a couple of interesting stops along the way. We stretched our legs in Piopio (first 6 pics), but it was too soon for lunch so we didn't try the food at The Fat Pigeon. Lunch & a longer walk happened at Te Kuiti, home of the BIG shearer, and the Sir Colin Meads statue & exhibition. Good lunch at Town & Country Food. Rusty metal sheep all over main street. Stained glass & Maori art exhibit. The last pit stop of our 9 day road trip was at a service centre at Bombay Hills. There was a Four Square grocer, so we scouted out take aways for our return to our Auckland home. Another blustery morning. Still looking for the peak of the volcano. Drove downtown to the water's edge in search of the 45+ meter fiberglass WAND sculpture. Found it!
Continued driving anti-clockwise around the Mt. Taranaki volcano, still hoping to see the peak and actually seeing some of the coast we missed by getting into New Plymouth the other way. Cool & very windy on the beaches. I even used my fingerless possum/merino gloves when taking pictures! Back in town for lunch, and the views of the snow-capped mountain are crisper - but still no summit. :( Wild, windswept waves - not really forgotten, but I finally transferred pictures from my big Canon to my laptop. It was a cool, very windy day at Oakura Beach, SW of New Plymouth.
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March 2024
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