Monday, September 12, 2011

My Weekend - Rugby World Cup madness takes over

Rugby World Cup madness has now taken over Wellington, I'm not a rugby fan at all but I am happy to take advantage of all the cultural events taking place around town. Rich and I went to check out the "fan zone" on the waterfront to watch the opening ceremony on the big screen.

Just to give you an idea how rugby mad this town has become, here's the front of one of the pubs in town with the opening game projected onto it!
On Saturday morning I decided to do a bit of shopping in Kilbirnie and whilst I was there I took the chance to visit the Japanese shop. The Japanese shop in Kilbirnie imports all kind of vintage goodies from Japan - they sell vintage Kimonos for around $25 and sell all kinds of pretty fabrics.



They often sell old pictures and photos at the Japanese shop - I loved this photo of this Japanese bride. It looks like its from the 1960's - she looked so fabulous in her wedding frock and long gloves.

On Saturday afternoon and evening Rich and I went to the Petone Carnival - like everything else, this year the carnival is focussed around the rugby world cup.

They had a lot of fun stuff at the carnival and a lot of it was free - including this petting zoo. The chicken was kind of cute but I've never seen a chicken before that was happy to have people pet it! It was a little weird.



Here's a dusk view of the carnival - yes all those people are lined up to go on that ride! The rides were only $5 to ride as many times as you want. So people were going a little crazy I think.
There was a night parade at the festival - but to be honest it was pretty lame. There were two good things, the fire dancers and these guys on unicycles with matching zebra trousers.
One of the big events for the festival was the fire sculptures - there were about 10 sculptures altogether I think and of course, like everything else at the moment, they were rugby themed.
Burn Baby BURN!


The evening finished off with a whole lot of fire works - I took a WHOLE bunch of photos but decided just to put a few up here. It was a really impressive display and went on for a really long time. Plus we could stand on the beach and watch the fireworks go off so we had a perfect view.




I hope you all had a good weekend!

7 comments:

cb said...

what fun! i would LOVE to see a good rugby game live, how awesome that would be. we had rugby at school but i never went to see the games :(
xo,
cb

Wait Until The Sunset said...

ooohh matching zebra trousers- awesome!! ;)

waituntilthesunset.blogspot.com

Julia said...

I'm probably going to get hate mail for saying this but I'm glad the rugby isn't in Chch! I know - how un-kiwi of me...

Vix said...

You lucky thing! Rugby isn't my thang either but those cultural events look brilliant.
Love that Japanese bride and the fluffy chick. x

Victoria said...

Looks like you had a fabulous weekend! xxx

Malayka said...

Oh yes I remember that Japanese shop! Isn't it amazing! Do they still have those stunning vintage Kimonos? I was told recently that they use the old ones to wrap up antiques that get sent to NZ... can you imagine?! What a waste! You're right, even for us non rugby fans it is still fun to check out the fireworks and cultural things that are going on. Oh and the inner city buses are now free in Auckland which I'm also not complaining about!

Trees said...

Yes! Stunning vintage Kimonos for like $25. I can't believe they cut up old ones just to wrap stuff in. But it does make sense as the owner has a bit of fabric remnants he sells for a couple of dollars each that look a lot like pieces of kimono, it might be what the antiques turn up in!