Fireworks Fun Times

This weekend has been a busy weekend full of adventures! One of the things Rich and I did this weekend was check out the Guy Fawks display on Saturday night. This year the council decided not to have the Guy Fawks display on the 5th of November, instead they had it on the following Saturday night so more people could check out the display.

This year we decided not to head to the waterfront, but instead headed up to Mount Street near Victoria University. There were less crowds and we still had a really great view of the fireworks.

As always, I still think its pretty weird we continue to celebrate Guy Fawks in New Zealand - but we get to see a fancy fireworks display for free, so I'm not going to get to hung up about it. 

Guy Fawkes 2012

I know to some people it may seem strange - but we do celebrate Guy Fawkes night in New Zealand. I guess its an overhang from our days as a British colony. I don't think many people really think too much about the history of Guy Fawkes night though,  for us its really just an excuse for us to have fireworks!

I used to LOVE Guy Fawkes night when I was young - we used to always make a Guy, have a bon fire and let off heaps of fireworks!

These days I live in an inner city apartment so letting off fire works really isn't safe or practical - so instead last night we went to the waterfront to watch the fireworks display the council put on each year.

Pretty amazing right? My little point and shoot camera really doesn't do justice to the fireworks display, it was awesome.

If you were celebrating Guy Fawkes Night last night I hope you had a great time whatever you got up too xoxo

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!

New Years Eve

Well New Years Eve was a long time ago, but I haven't let you all know what we got up to. It was a pretty crazy night, as life in Korea tends to be, I was told that the Roman Calendar New Years Eve wasn't such a big deal for Koreans (they have their big New Year Celebrations in February at Lunar New Year). But that didn't stop loads of people coming out to Seoul's time square to hear the bell toll at 12 pm, it also didn't stop hundreds of people buying fireworks and setting them off in the middle of a major crowd - that's just how it rolls in Korea! Also the weather was icy - well below zero! Still all this didn't stop us from having an amazing night - the crazines was very fun.