I've been to see "Six - the Musical" in Auckland

 Hi there

Last week I went up to Auckland to see "Six - The Musical".  It was great, loved it.  Got the "Six" tote bag.  

"Six" is about the six wives of Henry the 8th.  Each one sings about how they had a worst time than each of the other wives.

I went up to Auckland, from Wellington, by bus...  Usually I fly, but this time I liked the idea of a bus adventure.  Turned out to be a 13 hour adventure

Oh dear...  There were so many detours, diversions, closures, stoppages, road cones, workmen with stop signs, and emergency traffic lights, that I swear my Intercity bus was off Highway No 1 (that historically leads straight up to Auckland from Wellington) more times than we were on it.  Because of the delays and then the rush to not be too overly-late for arrival in the City of Sails we hadnt even stopped for dinner,.  Lunch had been at noon.  We arrived Auckland at 10.15 pm.  We had stopped at some toilet stops but were chastised with "Be back in five minutes.  Repeat, five minutes.  Or.....?"

above:  During our diversion away from The Desert Road we ended up in The National Park with the bus weaving up a mountain.  This was the view of Lake Taupo way way down in the distance.

But because of the road diversions we did see magnificent backblocks* scenery, especially around the Ohakune area.  

I flew home from Auckland last Thursday, the day before it was announced that The Desert Road was now open for Highway No 1 traffic.  The Desert Road detour had been the worst and longest traffic detour, taking us through the National Park area, weaving our way up the mountain.

Anyway....

You know how a friend told me years ago that I always get injured just before a holiday or when I'm actually on holiday?   Well, a week before I left, plantar fascitiis returned to my heel.  I had to take a collapsible walking stick with me. I took one pair of shoes and one pair of sandals.  The shoes kiilled me, but the Skecher sandals with their thicker, softer soles and just a thin strap at the back, were my saviours.  I wish I'd realised that the last time I had plantar fascitiis, instead of stocking up on innersoles, expensive thick socks, and brand new trainers.

above:  I went to Giraffe restaurant at the Viaduct Harbour.  This is the view from my table.  Lots of superyachts berth at Viaduct Harbour.  Its a nice walk on the Viaduct Harbour walkways.  Many restaurants.  The main street in the city is Queen Street.  At the bottom of Queen Street is the ferry terminal (take Devonport and/or Waiheke ferries! - I always do one or the other, or both, when I'm in Auckland). Also turn left at bottom of Queen Street to have a nice amble to Viaduct Harbour.

above:  Viaduct Harbour Auckland.  Wellington spiffed up their wharf including a high-diving platform for swimmers, but Auckland had to go one better with a whole pool, complete with swimming lanes.

above: remember how I growl that I always seem to have the tallest person in an audience sitting in front of me?  Here's the guy in front of me at the show "Six - the Musical".  We were standing up for the curtain call but he felt just as tall when we were seated...

   *backblocks" equals "right out in the country".

Oh, and no more musicals until later this year when I go to Sydney to see "Back to the Future - the musical".  Can't wait.  I suspect the car will fly around above the audience's heads, like the time I saw "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - the musical" and the same for "Mary Poppins - the musical".  And the Dementors in "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child".

I've returned from holiday

Hi there

Well, I've been to Auckland to see the two stage musicals, "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" and "Billy Elliot".  I was a fraction disapponted in "Priscilla".  This was a production from England, and the version I saw about ten years ago at the same theatre was the Aussie version before it had been workshopped for the West End, and Broadway.  I figure last week's production was a bit jaded, extra songs had been added or deleted (I have the Aussie version soundtrack), and the so-called Aussie accents sounded too British.

"Billy Elliot" was great.  What great dancing (more about this in a future blog).

Then I went to Waiheke Island (45 mins from Auckland by fast ferry) for five nights.  I was staying at a holiday home practically on Oneroa Beach.  I swam every day  .I didn't take my camera and had to make do with my cheapy mobile phone, please excuse quality of photos.

Oh, and I got covered in sandfly bites.  Then I got bitten on the arm by something.  Still ... somehow I managed to enjoy myself!

Oh, and I bought two dresses.

 above:  I was staying about fourth house from this end.   Below: three views from house balcony.

 Below: holiday house, taken by me standing in the shallows.  It's the house behind the  tidy hedge.

Cross fingers for me for tomorow please.  I'm going to the eye doctor and the decision will be made as to whether I can continue driving....

Waiheke Island sandflies

Hi there

I've just returned from Auckland.  While there, I went swimming on Waiheke Island (two different beaches), and at Mission Bay, and also Takapuna Beach.

Oneroa Beach on Waiheke is lovely and so is (the water at)  Palm Beach.  But Palm Beach has sandflies.  Lots of little hippity-hoppity sandflies.  Most of them wanting to surround obviously only me.  I decided to laze up high on a wooden bench, but they surrounded me up there, too.   Who knew the little blighters could jump so high?

Cutting short my enjoyment of a lovely afternoon, I stomped angrily back into the changing shed where a fellow swimmer pointed out that I was in the centre of a ball of sandflies.

"Oooh, they're in your hair!" she shrieked.  "Go-get-a-shower!-go-get-a-shower!" 

She all but pushed me out of the shed.

Water is scarce on Waiheke but I stayed under that outside shower a good ten minutes.  I didn't care about passersby looking meaningfully at their watches, or even if they were staring at my big thighs. 

All I could think of was that I must have looked awfully like Pigpen, the character from the Peanuts comic strip ...

***
PS:  I don't know what sandflies are called outside of New Zealand.  Maybe 'midges'?

PPS:  no lasting effects from my bubble bath bathroom flood, except I was up till 2 am washing and drying dozens of towels.

Swimming on Waiheke Island, Auckland

Hi there

I had to wander around Auckland for a few hours before I left for Waiheke and, my goodness, was it windy.  People go on ...and on .... about Windy Wellington, but the day I arrived in Auckland I could hardly stand upright. Anyway, it was still windy when I reached Waiheke, but the first thing I did before I'd barely even looked around my rental accommodation was change into my togs and rush to the beach. 

The breakers were huge because of  a storm further out at sea.  Still, I'd looked forward to this holiday for months and nothing was going to stop me getting into the waters at Palm Beach.  There was nobody else in the sea, but quite a few folk were sitting on the beach.

Whoops.  I couldn't stay upright in the water.  Or even swim to get out to calmer waters.  One wave was so gigantic that I got thrown back onto the shore, landing on a myriad of hurtful crushed shells and, worse, the top that I was wearing ended up somewhere around my neck.  In hindsight I should have tucked my top into my shorts.

All I can say is that thank goodness I wasn't wearing my glasses.  It would have been horrendous and not to mention embarrassing if I'd been able to see the looks on the faces of the folk on the beach as they took in my topless torso!

Waiheke Island

Hi there
I've just returned from a whole week on Waiheke Island which is 40 minutes by fast ferry out of Auckland.  I stayed in an apartment complex on Palm Beach (the unit was called Palm Breeze, if you're looking it up) and was just across the road from the beach.  What a beautiful place to swim.....   I swam at least three times a day.  I swam at 7 a.m.  I swam at 7 pm, and any time in between.  The temps were from 23c to 28c, and I only had about an hour's drizzle in total.  Poor Wellington, they didn't have too good weather, I believe! - hehehehe...

My heel didn't play up (I took a collapsible stick with me but didnt use it).  In fact, I did a lot of hiking along tracks.  Everywhere on the island there is greenery, and bird song.  The i-site office can supply folk with free walking maps.

Another thing that is rampant on the island.... chain saw noises, mower noises, weed-eater noises...  You know how they say that a dog can bark at the top of the north island and the call is taken up by other dogs continually all the way down the island until a bark reaches Wellington?  I figure chain saws and such noises are the same on Waiheke... from one end of the island to the other in mere minutes.

Until I can locate and transfer photos on my new mobile phone, for your perusal, here are some photos I took last year.  Below is Palm Beach, the main part.   There is a nude beach at the other end of Palm Beach, behind a rock cluster...

Here is the verandah of my Palm Beach holiday rental - it used to be called Seascape (the name is still on it's wall) but is now officially called Palm Breeze.

If my overseas reader ever gets a chance to get to Auckland, do take a day trip over to Waiheke.  You will love it.

Plantar Fasciitis? - what is it good for? ... (altogether now: ) ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Hi there

A few days after I returned from Las Vegas, I visited my doctor.  Show and Tell Time.  I carried into his surgery a huge bag stuffed with  shoes, orthotic inserts, and gel heels.  I was just about at the end of my tether.

"Do you know what I've been wearing for nine months?  Nine months?  Nine loooooong months?" I all but hollered.  "These - !"  I shook a clunky hiking sandal in my doctor's face.  "And these - !"  I flourished forth a thick-soled pair of  black New Balance trainers.  "And what about these-!   A swag of shoe inserts landed on his desk, followed by half-a-dozen shoes that hadn't made the grade.

My doctor  said he took it that I still had plantar fasciitis of the heel?

"How would your wife like to wear hiking sandals and trainers every time she went out of the house for nine loooooong months!"  I tried not to sound bitter, but I guess the poor guy could see through me.  He commiserated, said he understood.

How could this man understand that for nine months I couldn't wear dangling chandelier-like ear-rings, or a pretty frock, or feminine clothes because "I have to dress down to match my footwear!"

I told him about how by my third to last day in Las Vegas, mid-afternoon, I had to stumble back to my room at the MGM Grand because I couldn't walk anymore.  I told him how I'd spent months pre-Vegas, searching for just the right glitter clothes to wear at night and how because of my stupid foot I couldn't go out at night because by day's end in Vegas, I could hardly hobble. 

I told him how I wore an ordinary pair of pretty sandals for the first two nights of my holiday - only two lousy nights - because I wanted to look normal for a change.  And that those 'normal' sandals, coupled with walking on casino marble floors, ruined my heel for the rest of my stay.

I told him how, whilst staying at the MGM Grand (five nights), the only way I could get around the room was by pushing a wheelie chair ahead of me as a 'walker'.

 And that was when I burst into tears.

The doctor could only commiserate.  "The healing takes time," he said.

Well ....  I've booked for a summer holiday of hiking on Waiheke Island for this coming summer.  Last summer I could only hobble backwards and forwards to the bus stop at Waiheke.  If I can't hike there this year,  I will go back to my doctor, and I will have an honest-to-goodness tantrum.  Sigh.


Oh, above is a pic of me, taken at the MGM Grand, with the wheelie chair that I had to use as a walking frame for the last five days of my holiday.

Headlands Sculpture Walk, Waiheke Island

Hi there.  Every February on Waiheke Island, 40 mins by ferry from Auckland city, there is a sculpture walk.  There is a bus that takes you from a pavilion  near where the ferry lands, to a top point on the island,and returns you again at finish of your walk. 

On arrival at the top of the island, you walk down a 3 km track past loads of modern sculptures, and the most beautiful scenery imaginable.   You only have to pay a few dollars for the bus ride.    And if you've got thousands of dollars you can buy one of the  sculptures for your backyard.

Because of my sore foot, I did have a bit of trouble with the downhill bits, but once when I stumbled  on a step a gorgeous young man rushed to my aid and I swooned against his chest like some giggly teenage girl.

There was one sculpture that had everybody around me puzzled.  It wasnt until I said "The Birds?  The movie?  Alfred Hitchcock?" that people twigged.  It pays to be a movie buff.

Another sculpture was like a giant tree harp that could be played.   And yet one more sculpture (behind me in photo)  was a sort of large gazebo that was made up entirely of joined-together off-cut scraps of wood.  One man I talked to was amazed by this because he said there was no skeleton holding up the scraps of wood.       It was such a hot day.  About 30c every day I was on Waiheke.

Eating and shopping on Waiheke Island

Hi there.  The shops on Waiheke Island, 40 mins away from the city of Auckland, New Zealand, are sort of weird, but in a nice sort of weird getting-away-from-civilisation way.  There are no what I would call 'ordinary' shops.  There are artsy craftsy souvenir-ish shops, and then there are shops that sell sun-dresses, board shorts, beads, and sarongs. And, really, that is it!   There's a tiny 4-square (mini mart) shop at Oneroa and, hidden away in the middle of the island, at Ostend, away from the day and weekend tourists, is a Countdown Supermarket.  And there are wineries, of course.

Oh, and there were  quite a few cafes.  I remembered to take three photos but was so busy chomping down at other places that I'd finished my meal before I thought of my camera.

'Ricky's' on the main road at Oneroa is very popular.  The  burger I had there was excellent and I loved surreptiously feeding this baby seagull who kept coming up to me with begging eyes and a real loud squawk.  I took a bite out of the burger, then remembered to take a photo, hence the chewed-off corner bit in the photo, sorry about that.

I loved the fish and chip meal at '151 Ocean View', Oneroa.  At last I had discovered a place that gave you fish without batter, just plain old pan-fried.  I sat on the deck and watched the goings-on at Oneroa beach.

On another day I thought that I'd go to Ostend and get a steak meal at a cafe I'd found open when I went supermarket shopping.  The buses on Waiheke only go once an hour.  So, I got dumped off, only to discover that this cafe was shut on Wednesdays.  I now had to hang around for an hour.  I hiked up the hill to proper-Ostend where there were a sprinkle of the usual type of shops.  I went into a cafe called "Get Stuffed'.

I didn't.  'Get stuffed', that is.  It was a terrible meal.  I got a bacon panini.  The panini was so tough, and so burnt that - wait for it! - one of the tines on my fork bent as I was trying to hold the panini down and cut it with my knife.

And I'll finish off with one more grizzle.  Why is it nowadays that cafes bring you a knife and fork wrapped up ever-so-tightly in a serviette?  By the time I manage to claw the serviette off the cutlery, it's in scrappy pieces, and I have to get up and beg for a new serviette.  And by this time my meal is cold!

Here's another pic of Palm Beach. There arent really any true 'palms' on Palm Beach.  There are New Zealand palms, ie Cabbage Trees, and also  NZ Nikau trees (see previous blog photo of my hol home view).   I loved it when I was in Torquay in England a few years back on an Agatha Christie pilgrimage and found that Torquay boast like mad about their palm trees - only to see that it was our Cabbage Trees that coat Torquay. 

I swam three times a day on Waiheke and it was like being in a spa bath.   I swam yesterday at Hataitai Beach .... ooooohhh cold, both weather and water.  I'll have to get acclimatised.

 

 

I'm back from Waiheke Island

Hi there.  Did you miss me?  I had a lovely relaxing week on Waiheke Island.   30c every day, and not a spot of rain.  Even though 'Waiheke' sounds Hawaiian, it's not.  The island is 40 minutes by fast boat from Auckland (New Zealand) city.  To get there I travelled:  a taxi, a plane, a bus, a boat, and another bus.  I'd never been to this particular holiday home before but I had been to Palm Beach where it was located and I loved the place.  The holiday apartment was excellent.  It was called Seascape, but on getting home I discovered that the place had been bought by someone else and was now named Palm Breeze.  It's  54c Palm Beach Road

 I tied my hiking stick to my shoulder bag for when I staggered out of planes, lifts, doorways, crowds, with my suitcase in tow.  I tended to get the hiking stick tangled between many passerbys' legs.    After about the twentieth apology, I glanced down at the bottom of the stick and noticed that the ferrule (the posh name for the rubber knobby thing on the end) was gone.  What was now showing was a very pointy metal arrowhead.   From then on, I had to really keep an eye on the stick, I was petrified I would do untold damage to a person's private parts.  Worse still, what if I was banned from flying home because of carrying 'a dangerous weapon'.  I'd lost the ferrule once before when I had to travel on the inter-island ferry.  An officer told me I couldn't board without covering the pointy end of my hiking stick.  I boarded the boat with a gayly-patterned yellow and black bedsock pushed down onto my hiking stick which was sticking out from my backpack like some country's flag.  No problem getting past plane attendants, however, returning home from Waiheke, which was a bit scary - what if I'd wanted to use my unferruled hiking stick as a weapon? 

I know that locks were my downfall in Queenstown and, yes, I did have trouble a wee bit with my door key on Waiheke (I left the owners a message to please do some oiling), but curtain rails were my main gripe.     After a shower, I threw the bathmat over the shower curtain railing to dry off.  Boom!  The whole railing, plus curtain and towel, came down on my head.  The railing wasn't solid to the wall, it had just been balanced on wall curves.

Second curtain mishap:  I swished open the long bedroom curtain one morning and, oh dear swished the curtain and the pointy-knobby stopper thingee at the end of the railing right off the entire railing and practically into the next room!

Though I never managed to walk more than 3 kms at a stretch because of my sore ankle, I was determined to walk down a zig zag track at one end of Palm Beach.  I got off the bus at Pope's Corner had a nice walk to the top of the track.  Uh-oh, steps and steepness galore.  I stumbled a few times, sidled down the steps like a demented crab, and finally got to the bottom to discover I was on the hidden away end of Palm Beach.  The nude end! 

Where to look.  Or not look.  Decisions ...  Decisions ...  Should I look straight ahead?  Or at the sea?  Maybe I should nonchalently rake me eyes over to the nude sunbathers (familes, singles, couples), just to show I wasn't a prude?   Except for one quick peek at a middle-aged male's plump rear as he ran past me into the water, I kept my eyes firmly staring at the sand as I made my way over to the non-nude part of Palm Beach.  Oh dear, perhaps I should have shown what a woman of the world I was and taken a nude dip, too....  Only joking.  That much of a woman of the world, I am not!

 Waiheke is a very artsy-craftsy place and I bought a beautiful little ceramic statue of a bather sitting on a towel (artist: Jacqueline Riley).  I broke the 'towel' in half  when I sat the statue down too hard on the coffee table.  $50 down the drain in one not-so-heavy knock.  Maybe I can glue it together.

Here's some pics:  1  my lovely apartment holiday home.  2  view from deck at my holiday home which is just across the road from the beach (and right opposite bus stop from the ferry, great!).  3  A section of Palm Beach - the nude beach is way in the background past that lot of rocks that jut into the water.  3  main area of my holiday home.

Hobbits and second breakfasts

 

 

 

 

 

When I was visiting the Matamata filming set of 'The Hobbit" movies, I ruminated on Second Breakfasts.  I differ from hobbits in so far as I could happily put down third and fourth breakfasts.  Sigh, I guess this is why I've always had, well, an ample figure. 

 

(darn, I'm now caught up with all my typing centred because of the photos.  Sorry 'bout that.  I've been trying a new way of getting the photos onto this blog which is obviously not working very good).

 

Ever since November when I hurt my heel and, then, three weeks ago when I tore a ligament in one of my ankles, I've not been able to do my daily hike over the Wellington hills.  I've just sat ....and ate!  And not just hobbit breakfasts but also second lunches and second dinners, not to mention morning and afternoon teas.  Plus Eskimo Pie ice creams, creamy lamingtons, and butterfly cakes.

 

Oh dear, I have become quite rotund.  Okay, more rotund(er) than usual!  Hobbit-rotunded, if truth be told.  For 25 years I have worked out regularly either in the real gym or my gym room at home.  But, now, I've hardly been near any sort of gym since December.  Still swimming though, and that has to help a little bit yeah?

 

I'm off soon on holiday to Palm Beach on Waiheke Island, 40 minutes from Auckland.  When I booked I had visions of hiking up and down dales.  Now, it will just have to be swimming and bus riding.  Let's hope the holiday goes smoothly with no splotchy allergy rash, locked doors, or ruined ankles.  Altogether now, everyone cross fingers and touch wood for me!   Please ....