Auckland Birthday Adventures - Part One

It was recently my birthday, when Rich and I heard that The Cure (one of our favourite bands) were going to have a gig in Auckland around my birthday we decided to take a mini break. It also helps some of our closest friends, Conor and Sue, live in Auckland!

We took two days off work (the concert was on Thursday so we figured we may as well stay until Sunday) and had some time in the city exploring whilst our friends were at work.

After a bit of breakfast (we took an early morning flight) we decided to check out a few stores, Rich even came to the Hello Kitty store with me!

Unfortunately this kind of stuff is pretty expensive here in New Zealand, so I usually wait till we go traveling to buy Sanrio related goodies, but I did buy a new key ring.

We walked along Queen Street and checked out a few more stores, Queen Street has quite a lot of Asian stores which are always fun to check out.

We pocked up a green tea "Crunky" bar to try (we used to eat Crunky in Korea - its a chocolate bar with rice bubbles).

We also stopped off at Real Groovy Records - but it seems these days there is less music and more books and pop culture stuff, but I guess stores like this have to adapt or die.

We had a bit of a look around K Road and decided to buy some lunch and head to the Winter Gardens. For lunch we bought these insane rice burgers! SO MUCH RICE (but delicious).

We spent some times wandering around the winter gardens, we've been here a few times in the past but they are lovely and its also nice to head into a hot house on a cold winters day!

We walked to the Auckland Museum (but didn't go inside) and war memorial and looked out on the city. This is one of my favourite spots when I'm visiting.

We ended up walking back down to the city from the gardens and ended up at the Auckland waterfront for a while.

After this we met up with our friends after they finished work, checked out their new house, had some dinner and then went to see The Cure!

The show was amazing and the set was THREE HOURS long! This is the second time for all of us seeing The Cure, we all saw them together last time they were in New Zealand10 years ago! That's the downside of living at the end of the world I guess. The show was amazing though and this time they played my favourite song - Love cats! Which they didn't play way back in 2006 -  I was pretty happy.

USA Part Six - Portland!

I had mentioned in my earlier posts that Seattle hadn't really been on my top ten of places to visit list (however, it was a totally awesome place to visit). Well Portland is the exact opposite, I'd wanted to visited Portland for a long time and not only because of Portlandia.


We got the early morning train from Seattle to Portland and by the time we arrived it was already so very, VERY hot!

But we still decided to try and head out and do something (after buying our second bottle of sunscreen for this trip). Our friends son picked us up from the train station and we were hanging out at his apartment until we could head over to the air bnb we were staying at. We decided to have some lunch and then head to the Botanical Gardens that weren't too far from his apartment (and we were hopeful they would provide a bit of shade from the meltingly hot sun!).

My favourite part of the gardens? The Japanese gardens!  They were do beautiful and so serene, I really loved it. It was nice to visit a calm place after so many hours traveling and time spent in busy big cities.

That was pretty much it for our first day in Portland! We spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the air bnb - but never fear, there are plenty more Portland adventures to come.

Things have gotten turned upside down!

Hello all - you may have noticed I've been a little bit vacant from the world of blogging for a bit. The truth of the matter is, my brother has had an accident which had lead to him ending up in the hospital, the time frame of how long he will be in the hospital is currently unknown. He lives up north in Hamilton, fortunately I also lived in Hamilton for the better part of eight years and whilst I was here I made some pretty wonderful friends, who are more than happy to have me stay with them as long as is needed. So right now, my whole life is operating out of Hamilton. I will be going back to work tomorrow in my organisations Hamilton office, but I will be heading up to the hospital after work each day. My plan at this stage is to return to Wellington this coming Saturday, lets hope it all works out.

I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation, spending time with old friends in my old city, but I would be lying if I said it wasn't tough right now - because it is.

However, there are some good times - like last Saturday we took my brother to the Hamilton Botanical Gardens. The gardens were always one of my favourite things about the city, I decided to take a few pictures to share with the world. In some ways they are a standard city botanical gardens, however, they do have an area of "themed" gardens which are just incredible.

First up in the Japanese Garden - complete with zen garden, haiku and coy carp.

My favourite garden is the Chinese garden, although it was super busy on the day we went, it really is a lovely calm place.

Next up is the American Modernist garden, only a few photos, as it was modernist - not too much to take photos of when its all clean lines. Also, its not really my favourite garden - sorry American Modernist Garden.

Since I last lived in Hamilton a new garden has been built, the Indian Garden and it sure is beautiful. I could easily spend plenty of time hanging out here (plus imagine the great photo shoots you could have).

Last, but not least is the Italian Renaissance Garden, for some reason I feel like this was the first of these themed gardens. However, I could totally be making that up. It is a really beautiful spot - I've seen a lot of wedding parties having photos taken here over my years of living in Hamilton - you guys can see why right?

Well its time for me to head up to the hospital - I hope to see you all in the blog-o-sphere sooner rather than later. But will have to take it one day at a time right now, hope to be back soon (and also hopefully I can catch up on my blog reading).