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Good Friday

View of the swimming pool from our hotel room. 

This morning I awoke at 8am and went for a run to the Botanical Gardens. It was hot and sunny. When I returned 28 minutes later I was blathered. Boy was it hot! Sue said I looked ill! Sue was on the treadmill in the air conditioned gym. I played around with the bike, machines and weights and then we went for a swim in the pool. We stayed at the pool until lunch when we returned to the room.

In the afternoon we went to ‘Little India’ and the Mustafa Centre. It was very busy on route. I could see Singapore being gridlocked in the next 5 years. The road infrastructure is very good but there are just too many people. When we were out last night Sue said that it was just like they had released people from a football match.

It was even busier inside the shopping centre. At least it was cool inside. We managed to buy some gifts but you couldn’t shop in peace due to the crowds. We returned to the hotel to put away our shopping and jumped into another taxi and went to the Tanglin mall area. I attempted to seek out the Internet place I used when we were last here in 2001. The place was really unrecognisable. The pace of change here in Singapore is staggering. Buildings are going up everywhere, all of them high rise. No bungalows here.

We walked up into Orchard Road. I just couldn’t find the Internet place. I gave up, the area was a big shopping city. Expensive too.

We found a quiet resturant and had a good meal, wine and a couple of beers.

No more walking around tonight so we returned to the hotel

Singapore Botanic Gardens

In the Botanic Gardens. 

We awoke quite early and was out for about 10.00am. The hotel was quite close to the Botanic Gardens so we walked from the hotel.

It was sunny and hot and it wasn’t long before we had to have a pit stop. We found an Indian Cafe and had a quick coffee and curry. A large white woman with a very red face appeared and obviously needed to cool down. It looked as if she had ran a marathon. It doesn’t pay to be overweight in Singapore! We were off again and soon in the park. After an hour Sue was flagging and her face was becoming bright red despite constantly drinking water from her bottle. We walked down to the Tanglin Mall at the bottom of the Gardens and sought refuge in the air conditioning. We did some grocery shopping inside and got a taxi back to the hotel for an afternoon siesta.

The pool was empty late afternoon (6pm) and Sue popped down and enjoyed the pool to herself.

In the evening we caught a taxi down to Orchard Road. It was busy, really busy. I don’t remember it being like this last time we were here in 2001. We walked around for ages trying to find somewhere suitable to eat. The food halls were cheap here but Ugh! the smells were awful. We are not fish lovers and most places had fish in their dishes. We found a more western place but people were queueing to get in. We walked around for about an hour and a half altogther. Sue was getting a little brassed off. She wasn’t coping well with the heat and humidity. I ended up with a bowl of soup and Sue with a hot dog. We then waited ages for a taxi. People were wating everywhere.

Leaving New Zealand

In the Aspen B & B.

I was up early for a run around Albert Park this morning. I was feeling fairly energenic so I ran an extra lap and a couple of sprints up the hill.

When I got back to the B & B Sue was practically packed. We went for breakfast then returned to our rooms to finish packing.

We brought all our stuff into the lounge and sat waiting for the taxi that was scheduled for 11am. There was no milk left so we decided to call the taxi early and sit at the airport instead of the hotel.

We left the B & B at 10.15am and set off for the airport. It was sunny and the skies were blue. It was a pleasant ride to Auckland Airport.

We had soon cleared customs and were waiting in the departure lounge after getting stung for a $50 departure tax!

We had a very uneventful flight and landed at Changi Airport, Singapore 8.35pm. We got a shuttle bus ($14 for both of us) to the Copthorne Orchid Hotel, they are much cheaper than taxis. We took our cases to the room and then headed down to the bar for a beer. £7 for two lagers thank you. We only had one drink then off to bed as it was a very long day.

Killing time

 

Sue packing the cases at Aspen House. 

I went for a jog first thing. Up the hill and a couple of laps around Albert Park. Sue wanted to have another walk around the waterfront. So we spent the morning down at the docks then we returned to the B&B for lunch. Later we went to the library and had a coffee and a wander around Albert Park. It was warm and sunny and lots of people were doing the same. We were really killing time as it was the last full day we were having in NZ.

We went down the food halls for our evening meal and followed it up with a beer in the pub on the way back.

Auckland Domain & Winter Gardens

Sue having a moment to herself in the Auckland domain. 

Sue was up at 7am, I managed to drag myself out of bed at 7.30. I could see blue skies again from out of the hotel window. I donned the running kit and went for a jog around Albert Park. There were a few joggers about.

I returned to the hotel and prepared myself fpr the day. we decided to go and visit the Auckland War memorial Museum today. We set off about 9.20am and found ourselves at the main door waiting for it to open at 9.50am. The museum was built in 1929 to commemorate the end of World War 1 in which 16,697 New Zealanders died. While we were wandering the exhibits where the trenches were, Simon called from Afghanistan and was quite amused as he could here the gun fire and sirens from the exhibits. He is fine and looking forward to returning home on leave.

The museum is very large and has 3 floors it took us a couple of hours to walk around the top two floors and we just whizzed around the ground floor where most of the Maori exhibits were. We were getting a little jaded visiting museums. We left the museum and walked over to the Winter Gardens and had a look around eventually having a drink at the cafe. The sun was out and it was very warm in the afternoon sun. We got back to the hotel after 2pm. We had a quick lunch and then an hours nap.

Auckland Centre

Aspen House Hotel Room. 

The weather was a bit mixed when we got up today. Auckland is frequently like this. It looked fine before we left the B&B and as we walked out of the door it was raining. We had our waterproofs with us so we walked to the main supermarket at the waterfront. We went and bought some food as we were fed up of eating Kebabs. We brought the food back and as the weather was poor we went to the city libary. In the library you can watch CNN news, have a coffee while you look at the magazines and books.

The library was quite full, mainly with Chinese asians hard at work studying text books. After a couple of hours the sun came out and we walked to Albert Park. There was a drama group re-enacting the Last Supper and some poor lad was having to carry this really heavy looking wooded cross about the park.

Down the waterfront

This morning the weather had improved somewhat. Today we went exploring Auckland Harbour. The harbour area to the right is industrialised and not really accessable. We started at the Ferry Building and walked along Quay Street past towards Princes Wharf. It is a 10 minute boat ride to Davenport form here but we had already visited the place previously. We enquired about tickets to one of the Waiheke Island but in the end we gave it a miss. Along the waterfront the developers have got in and like most modern cities you can find expensive apartments, lots of cafes, restuarants and bars.

Auckland is known as the city of sails as it is purported to have the greatest number of boats per capita of any city of the world. We spent a couple of hours wandering about looking at the expensive boats in the Viaduct Harbour. We came across the “Athena’ Yacht as it was moored up alonside the pier in Princes Wharf. ‘Athena’ was registered in Georgetown, Cayman Islands and is a beautiful modern yacht.

 

Described as the Godess of the Sea and probably the world’s largest privately owned sailing yacht. It is a 3 masted Schooner, 289 feet in length and when the wind reaches over force 5 is capable of 18.9 knots under sail.

The tallest of Athena’s three masts is 62 meters in height. To give a sense of scale, the view from the Athena’s crow’s nest is much the same as peering over the top of a 20-story high building. AWESOME!

Later we returned to the B & B.

In the evening we returned to the waterfront area to sample some of the many bars. It wasn’t as busy as I expected. Newton-le-Willows High street would have been busier on a Saturday night.

Bucketing down

It was really raining hard when we awoke. The forecast said that it was in until Sunday! We went down for breakfast then retreated back to the room to sort out suitcases etc. Later I went through my photographs to try and prune them down a little. I had taken nearly 10,000 photographs whilst abroad.  Most were rubbish.

Sue went out shopping. I went to the Internet cafe and later we went to eat out. Simon called us while we were having a curry. He is fine and looking forward to his leave.

We haave had an enormous amount of rain here in Auckland. In Wangerai which is less that 200 miles North, they had  over 50 mm of rain today. The city is flooded, roads are flooded. The worst in years. The rain is widespread and is all over NZ. I am glad we gave up the campavan.

Having said that when I got back to the hotel room the ceiling was leaking and there were 3 plastic dishes collecting the rain. They wanted to move us to a pokier room than we were in. No thanks. Later the ceiling stopped letting in rain. Great.

 

Better days in the campavan.

To Auckland

We were up at 6.50am as we were leaving Mt. Maunganui this morning. We were returning the campavan as its time was up. It wasn’t raining but it was gloomy and it had rained heavily during the night. We had enjoyed our time at the Mount but it was time to move on.

We said goodbye to Stu and set off. We were soon through Turanga and along Highway 2. By 12.30am we had arrived at RV Motor Home, disposed of the campavan.

The campava was a Toyota Hi Ace YM6649. It was approximately 6 years old. It never once gave us any trouble. Altogether our total distance driven was 4190 miles (6742 Kilometres). That was covering the North Island and South Island. The total amount in petrol came to £431.00. That works out 9.7 miles to the £. I am not sure if this is right, I will check my figures?! ….. So I travelled 6742 kilometres and it cost me $1165. Can this be right? i need to check them figures when I have more time? I saw this on Yahoo – ( You will get around 37mpg (miles per gallon) for a Toyota Hiace. (that’s around 15.76 kms/litre)

We later boarded a taxi and was on our way to Auckland. We had booked a boutique B & B in the very centre of the city. The taxi driver didn’t know where he was going and we were soon stuck in traffic in Queen Street. Some major reconstruction was going on and the traffic was very slow. We found our B + B eventually and it wasn’t that good. Sue complained but we were stuck as we had paid up front through the information centre at Mt. Maunganui. So that was that. We dumped our suitcases and went to the city library. It was bright and cheerful inside.

After we went to the food hall and had a beer and chinese meal.