The last couple of day have been somewhat uneventful.
This weekend is Auckland Anniversary weekend which is the anniversary of the arrival of William Hobson, later the first Governor of New Zealand, in the Bay of Islands in 1840. This is what is known as a regional holiday although it would appear that many areas get "on the bandwagon" and have a day off. One annoying fact in New Zealand on bank/public holidays is that restaurants are allowed to charge a surcharge of 15% on meals - hopefully this is not something that will catch on in the UK.
Saturday was something of a washout - literally as it was another stormy day.
On Sunday we went over to Auckland city for the annual food and wine festival. One of the reasons was because the kids (well the two older ones) had the opportunity to have a free trip on The Spirit of New Zealand which is a sail training ship.
The Auckland Food Festival is one of those events that is aimed at trying to relieve visitors to the event of their cash (big style). Whilst I do not have too many problems as such with that philosophy I am not keen on spending money just for the sake of it. If you want to try a glass of wine you first have to buy a glass and then the wine!
Today, Monday, we started off on our "Road Trip". We set off from Auckland to our first stop at Whangamata which is a small town just at the base of the Coromandel.
This is quite a charming little town known mainly for its surf beaches and quite a few of shops in the town are geared towards this. In NZ a lot of the towns are, literally, one street towns. While there may be many roads in the town all of the shops are to be found on one street. You walk up one side of the street and back down the other side - and that is it, you have seen it all.
As we only arrived just after lunch time all we did was to have a walk around the "one street" and then down on to the beach. The motel that we are staying in is interesting in that if you walk out of the patio doors you are on the edge of the pool.
More to follow ...