Thursday, March 31, 2016

 

Auckland Tower


We were in Auckland on Christmas Day. Most things were closed but the Sky Tower was open. This is a 328 metre high telecom tower right in the CBD. It has an observation deck on the 51st floor. Knowing that Dad is a wuss when it comes to heights, of course we took him there. Well, we found that Mum has a bit of a problem as well. You see, some of the floor was glass and you could see right down to ground level. You can see the different techniques used by the Oldies to make their crossing of a glass section. Dad treated it like nasty medicine; hold nose, close eyes and get it over with quickly. Mum used the cover eyes and shuffle method. After the first crossing, they were OK. You get great views of the city from the tower. Here are two looking over the harbour. The left one shows one of the many large marinas dotted around the harbour. Kiwis are mad on sailing and really give the USA solid competition for the America's Cup. The right one is looking over the CBD to where the ship is docked. The ship that you can see at the other dock is "Golden Princess". In the background is Rangitoto, the most recent volcano of the dozens in the Auckland area. It has never gone off while I was there.

This afternoon we fly out from Canberra, on our way to one of my favourite places. Hint: it is one of the few countries whose name is 4 letters long and only 3 of them are different.

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Tauranga to Auckland

Here's "Voyager of the Seas" at two very different harbours. The top photo is at Mt Manganui, the port for Tauranga. Where cruise ships dock here is away from the main port area, which is much more busy. You have to take the shuttle bus to get into Tauranga. The bottom one is at Auckland. Here the ships dock right in town. You can (if you are feeling fit) walk from the ship to the CBD. The other photos? Well, while most of the passengers are ashore is a great time for small bears to go exploring. The crane thingy in the top photo is the gadget that lowers life rafts into the water. The rafts are in those white canisters and when they hit the water they pop open and become a raft holding around 100 passengers. I would love to see this happen, but although I climbed up to the base of the crane I just couldn't reach the handles. Mum says that's just as well because if I had managed to drop one overboard I would have been in big trouble. Actually, Mum kind of limits what I can do. Just look at her reaction when I was trying to see what this cable did. I work on the basis that signs written for people don't apply to small bears.

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Tuesday, March 29, 2016

 

Cooking Cookies

Yesterday I had my first attempt at making shortbread cookies. Mum let me do the lot. I mixed the stuff and pounded it into dough, and I didn't make anywhere as much mess as Dad does when he is "helping". Then I rolled it flat and cut it into flower shapes. Then I put it into the oven for the time Mum guessed, and there we have it. Bart-baked shortbread cookies. Now the hard part - keeping them out of Dad's clutches so that I have some left for Mum to take to work with her. Baker-bear Bart, that's me.

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Saturday, March 26, 2016

 

Ta-ta Tautanga

I always try to watch from the top deck when we are leaving a port. Usually cruise ships arrive early in the morning and if the Oldies are sleeping in sometimes, I can't watch the arrival. However, the ship usually leaves late in the afternoon and I can watch that. Leaving Tauranga is one of my favourites. The channel is rather narrow and takes the ship close to Mt Manganui. People turn out in droves to watch the ship depart. The narrow beach at the base of the mountain is usually packed with them. There are also lots of channel markers, big boards with guide lights on the port side and a couple of these cute little "lighthouses" on the rocks at the starboard side. People to watch, some crazy cars on the road around the mountain trying to race the ship, lights and beacons to find; I really do enjoy leaving port. 

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Tauranga, Teriffic

On Christmas Eve last, our ship, "Voyager of the Seas" docked for the day at Tauranga. The ship actually docks at the port, Mt Manganui (see posts from our previous NZ cruise), and we went into Tauranga by shuttle bus. The bus stops on the opposite side of the railway to the town centre, and there are signs at every pedestrian crossing warning about possible trains crossing. Mum and I waited for ages, but no trains came. Tauranga is one of the largest cities in New Zealand, and is the site where the Maori first settled in NZ. Naturally, the shops were all decked out for Christmas. I counted 14 different small Christmas trees  in the few streets we had time to explore, and some of the arcades were really pretty. I enjoyed the port more than the town, because there were colourful tugboats, pilot boats and private ones to look at. Our ship dwarfed them all.

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Monday, March 21, 2016

 

A Busy Weekend

Last weekend was a busy one. Apart from the work involved in supervising the Oldies while they get our house ready to sell, and pack stuff ready to move to our new place as soon as it is finished, I had a lot of social engagements as well. Friday night we were out with Aunty Enid, Unka Barry, cousins Ian and Doug, and of course my cobber Rufus. The four men all have birthdays around this time, so we had a joint celebration. You can see that Rufus had celebrated a bit too heartily on St Patrick's day (the day before) and is not sure just what day it was. Saturday was Canberra day, the celebration of 103 years since our city was officially founded. This is always a big day, with all sorts of stuff happening around the city. I like the evening events at Lake Burley-Griffin. This year I watched in style. Bro Trent invited us to pizza, drinks and the chance to watch from his office in the city. From the 13th floor we had a great view. As it got dark, things  started with a display by one of the RAAF FA-18 Hornets. Mum and I love loud, low and fast jets; Dad prefers prop-driven putt-putts. A bit later the fireworks erupted. Twenty minutes of noise, colour and spectacle. Sunday, we slept in.

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Friday, March 11, 2016

 

NZ Chocolate, The Best.

One of the things that New Zealand does best is chocolate. I love chocolate, and the Oldies are pretty good at making it disappear too. Every place we visited on our New Zealand cruises has its own chocolate shop, and here are two of the top chocolate places in NZ, probably the world. Actually, the top photos are not of a chocolate shop, but of a really great cafe in Wellington called "The Chocolate Fish". It is a barbecue cafe, everything comes barbecued on bread or bun. My carnivore Dad loved it. The Chocolate Fish is one of the old buildings on what was the Shelly Bay Air Force base. Shelly Bay was defence land from 1907 until the base closed in 1995. It is slowly being developed, some of the old buildings being heritage listed. If you visit Shelly Bay and the area looks sort of familiar, it is where the Skull Island scenes in the 2005 King Kong movie were filmed. The best chocolate shop we found is the Silky Oak Chocolate Factory shop near Napier. This place has walls and walls of all sorts of choccies and they are so good that just about every tourist bus stops there. I managed to climb up to where the Christmas specials were, it was just two days to Christmas and I needed some presents for the Oldies. Following usual practice, I picked them out and Dad paid for them.

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