Christmas and the "Hunting of the Native Waikato Zebra"!

I'm just back from a trip up to Cambridge to celebrate Christmas with relatives. As expected, this ended up being 4 days of almost constant laughs, plenty to eat, not too much to drink and more laughs!

Christmas lunch was to rather large affair, with more relatives and others around a large table, then more laughs [you get the idea!]. Add in to that a trip to Auckland and even more laughs [and a few lies from what I remember!]... a great time was had by all.

A special treat though was a visit to Maungakawa, aka Sanatorium Hill, on the outskirts of Cambridge. In ages past this was a place for the treatment of tuberculosis . Nowadays, all but one of of the buildings are gone, but it makes for a nice place to visit and offers great views over a fair part of the Waikato region. Included in this special treat was a safari to try and track and follow the mysterious, and not very well known, native Waikato Zebra.

See if you can spot the Waikato Zebra in some of the photos which follow. Top to bottom are photos of Maungakawa, views and the results of the safari. Last is a photo of my parents and aunt and uncle. Enjoy!

Legal movie download options for New Zealand

I have been looking for LEGAL movie download options for New Zealand, for use on an Android tablet. I thought I would share the results of my search. I thought this would be the shortest blog post I ever made.

I was right. This is what I found

.....

Does anyone know of an option I've missed?

The Simpsons!

A very very funny version of The Simpsons opening credits!

Final day in London and back home

After a very enjoyable 3 weeks, it came time to return home. Darn. I spent a lazy morning and early afternoon doing very little. We [sister, bro-in-law and niece] went out for a late lunch at a local pub followed by a walk to get an icecream... yummmm, icecream! Mine included organic honey - yum, yum!

After this, a brisk walk "home" to be picked up for my ride to Heathrow.

I spent rather more time than planned at Heathrow. Firstly, the traffic was very light and so the driver set a world record for the quickest ride to Heathrow [without breaking any speed limits]. Next, from joining the check in queue to clearing immigration and security [including an explosives check on my bag!] was just 10 minutes! Lastly, the flight was delayed by 40 minutes.

Oh well, at least it was a relaxing wait, and a good comfy flight home [which it always seems to be on Air NZ].

Photos are:

Me, Ferne, Rochelle and Sam
Ferne being her usual smiley self
Departure board at Heathrow

Enjoy!

Second-last day in London

I've been back in NZ a week and I'm now back at work, but I'm slowly catching up on the posts!

My second-last day in London was spent wandering around central London. I started off with a visit to the London Aquarium. I seem to end up here each time I visit London, so it was good to see that it had changed a bit since last time. It also looks like they are still doing a bit work work on the place, so it could be worth another visit sometime.

After that, I wandered over to the Tower Bridge and up through the museum there. The view up and down the Thames is probably worth the visit even without the rest of the displays, videos, and access to the original hydraulic equipment to raise and lower the deck.

Looking out from the bridge then gave me the idea of visiting the HMS Belfast, a World War II warship which is now managed by the Imperial War Museum and moored permanently in the Thames. All over the warship are displays showing life on board [right down to fake peas and steaks being cooked up]. There's also a very interesting 5 minute video which is played in the main rear gun turret.

Anyhow, here are the pictures. The big tall building still under construction is The Shard is/ will be the tallest building in Europe [for how long, I wonder?], and the final picture is the Farringdon tube station entrance where I met up with my sister for an evening out at a [slightly funny] live comedy show with her and a cousin.

Belfast hop-on-hop-off bus tour and the other reason why Belfast is famous...

Something I should have done on the first day rather than the 2 day was the Hop-on-hop-off bus tour of parts of Belfast.

Obviously, one of the big "features" of this was the commentary about "The Troubles". Even though Belfast appears very safe and friendly [the shuttle bus driver mentioned that tourists are always very welcome... well, maybe not the British according to one of them :-)], if you look around a bit, it's hard to miss the fact that there is still a bit of tension about. Hardly surprising considering the history I suppose.

A few bits and pieces I picked up on:

- The "Peace Walls" still exist, and in many places, are still locked up at night to stop sectarian violence!
- The latest "Peace Wall" was built in 2004 - many years after the Good Friday Peace Accord was signed...
- Some of the graffiti and murals is very recent [for example, Queen's Diamond Jubilee stuff]
- The murals looked well enough preserved... probably a brave or stupid person who would dare to scrub them off, I suppose.

Apart from all that, it felt like a very happy and safe place, and well worth a visit!

Anyway, here are some photos from the bus tour. The first one is of the big harbour cranes [called "Samson" and "Goliath"!]. The second is of the Parliamentary building, and the third of the Guard House on the grounds of Parliament [incidentally, it's staffed by G4S... I wonder how long for after the Olympics debacle :-(].

The rest of the photos are of the graffiti and murals/ shrines from the tour. A wee bit sobering, and makes me grateful that I live in a relatively peaceful country [accepting that we have our own problems of course...].

More Titanic in Belfast

After visiting the Titanic dry-dock and pump station, I went to another big an obvious Titanic tourist attraction. This is in the big building from the previous post. After making that post, I realised I didn't have many pictures of this one, so you'll need to use your imagination a little more this time!

This attraction is also fairly new [both of them are in what is called the "Titanic Quarter" of Belfast], and unlike the dry-dock, this is a brand new building, and appears designed as more of an immersive experience, with very high use of technology. The exhibits lead visitors through what Belfast was like from hundreds of years ago, right through to when the Titanic was built, and tries to give visitors an impression of what went into building the ship. The surprise for me was that after the first few exhibits and audio visual presentations, you are taken up to the top floor in a lift, and soon after that, onto a gentle suspended ride through the build of the Titanic. A really nice tough!

Without wanting to spoil the surprise, there is also a wrap-around fly-through of the finished ship and a video of a relatively recent dive onto the wreck plus much more. It's one of those things you really need to visit to understand.

Anyway, here are the pictures. The first is the building again [impressive in its own right!], the view out of one of the buildings and lastly, something completely unrelated, a big fish they are all rather proud of...