Auckland mark 2

Time for our final blog entry of New Zealand. Not too much has happened since our last mammoth entry so i guess the purpose of this is to update and add some more photos to our burgeoning collection.
When we left you on Sunday, England were being whooped in the First Test, the sun still hadn't shone continually for more than thirty minutes and i still couldn’t understand why people play Soduko. So not a lot has changed.. England managed to save some face by reaching over 300 in their final innings but the elusive golden orb that we have travelled so far to worship still shuns us. Oh, and Soduko is still weird.

We arrived at Pols relative Caroline's house on Sunday evening after a day spent wandering round shops and biting our nails as England valiantly attempted to bat for longer than 3 hours against the two juniors of the Australian team (Glenn Mcgrath 36 and Shane Warne 37.) Dinner was, wait for it, Roast Lamb! Having been in New Zealand for 2 months and not even getting near to lamb, i'd managed to eat it twice in two days. Heaven! We retired to bed that evening, full and content as we no longer had to sleep in that damn van!
Monday morning arrived and we were faced with the alien concept of not having to get up! Our room was dark (good Curtains) and we didn’t have to check out at 10am! So we sauntered down stairs and had a leisurely breakfast and made plans for the day ahead. The main aim was to see the remainder of the first test so as we had a couple of hours to spare, we headed over to the City to check out the Museum. Situated in a pleasant grassy reserve aptly named "Auckland Domain" the museum housed the War Memorial and several interesting exhibits that both Pol and I were keen to see. After 40 mins of wrong turns and missed streets, we parked EZY and tramped over the grass to the imposing entrance to the museum while discussing that it looked nothing like it did in the guide book (probably because the sky was clear blue!) After the obligatory circular door, we found ourselves in the reception/Cafe area of the building where we were greeted by a sign discussing the charges for entrance. Now, we had been told that there was a donation bin and essentially the museum was free.. how wrong was that! the three entrances were staffed by uniformed teenagers who greeted us with a welcome to Auckland Museum, can we ask for a donation of $5 please? Well Pol, being Pol, decided that she didnt like this and quipped "Its not really a donation then" to which the reply was "Well it is for Auckland rate payers". Great we both thought, they have even installed a EFTPOS machine on the gate so they could take credit card " Donations." what a crock!

The Museum itself was decidedly average. There was the usual smattering of exhibits, the most interesting being one that described the Thermal plates and volcanoes that are so abundant in New Zealand. There was also a house which was supposed to simulate the effects of a volcano errupting in the harbour of Auckland. We sat there watching the fake news report about the impending doom when the window (which was really a big tv) started to move and wow, the erruption happened before our eyes! All this smoke and ash billowed towards our “house” it shock briefly and everything went black. Then the lights came on and the show was over! We both felt slightly cheated!

After a couple more rooms full of insects and assorted flora and fauna, we emerged from the musuem and decided to head over to one of the “burbs” to watch the final few hours of the Test. However, neither of us thought we would get to see any of it as England lost two wickets in the short 20 min drive and knowing the tendency of the team to collapse, things were not looking good. The cricket Gods were obviously listening to us as they gifted Ashley Giles the ability to bat for longer than 10 mins and we arrived at the pub with 4 wickets remaining. We ordered a beer and a burger and settled down to watch the last minutes of the innings. It didn’t last long as England managed 25 mins and having barely eaten our burgers, we ambled out into the late afternoon sunshine and headed back to the house.
Tuesday was spent strolling around Auckland and we went to see Children of Men at the Cinema. The film was ok, Julianne Moore made more of a cameo appearance and Clive Owen did his best not to appear too wooden! Oh, Michael Caine was well funny as a stoned hippy!
Wednesday: Dropped off EZY in the city centre and managed to blag the agent who did the check in with us. We had driven off without the bucket and lost the tea towel in the course of the fortnight but bluntly told him that the woman at the airport had not included either item in the van when we picked it up! After complaining about the state of the first van, we went for some lunch at got the ferry back over to Bayswater.
Thursday (Today) The weather took a turn for the worse today so we have been pretty much house bound. A quick walk over lunch time was abandoned and we came back to attempt a 1000 piece jigsaw… we failed! Went to see a play at the theatre.
Oh.. one more thing.. tomorrow, you will have some pics on this entry.. the wifi connection we have (next doors) is rubbish and it takes too long for us to upload the snaps..

good night all

Pollyali

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