Member Since: 06 Mar 2017
Location: Lost
Posts: 5084
Reminds me Del of my youthful days in London! yµ (idµ - eAµ) ψ=mψ
30th Dec 2024 2:23 am
DSL Keeper of the wheelie bin
Member Since: 11 May 2006
Location: Off again! :-)
Posts: 73145
Earl’s Court? Lots of Kiwia and the odd, usually very odd, Aussie??
A few pics time! It was a loooooooong train ride from Auckland to Wellington, 11 hours in a train deffo has a ring of endurance. Luckily fortified by mince pies, Christmas cake, chocs and crisps! It wasn’t the fastest train on the planet, almost Canada Rail slow but not quite, but s’pose Shinkansen speed isn’t conducive for seeing the sights.
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Lots of lovely glass to see the scenery, plus lots of lovely sun to turn the carriage into a sauna as the AC wasn’t working in our area. Still, it was the last train for 3 weeks so glad they didn’t can the car or train, it would have been mega fun trying to get to Wellington if that had happened!
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There is a massive and ready to be active volcano under that cloud, if it went bada-bing, bada- boom when we went past we would have had a very bad day. It has potential to seriously remodel the N Island, from vulcanology lectures a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - well Cardiff Uni.
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Wellington over Chrimbo. It’s still odd having Christmas in summer but hey-Ho-Ho-Ho, half the planet has to. A few pics from wanderings around Wellington. Weather has been mixed, and had some of the infamous Wellington winds, rain and a bit of sunshine. Considering the weather is a bit like in central Scotland in mid summer (on a good day), Wellington is equiv latitude of Barcelona. You can tell the locals aren’t used to it when it gets sunny, they keep their puffa jackets in and wait it out!
Weta workshop is deffo worth going to, lots to learn about re LOTR film trickery, and got to play with real fake swords. No pics allowed inside the “working” areas, but The Hobbit trolls outside to take pics with. SWMBO isn’t quite sure which she thinks is cuter in this pic!! In the working areas they were making armour for a forthcoming epic, if I say more SWMBO will stab me with a plastic knife!
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Good going to Zealandia fenced reserve, seeing lots of birds we hadn’t a clue about apart from the odd sparrows. Not that we have much of a clue re birds in UK. Apart from Sparrows.
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Cheeky little Californian Quail strutting its stuff to the visitors. He absolutely loved the attention.
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And view from the Cable Car top station, with a bit of blue sky.
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Contrast that with today, positively grim! View from hotel at the mo. And yes the pic is in colour!!
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Tomorrow off to look for fur sea.
30th Dec 2024 5:02 am
DSL Keeper of the wheelie bin
Member Since: 11 May 2006
Location: Off again! :-)
Posts: 73145
Naki Blake wrote:
What are ya up to DSL?
Curious to know, how are you finding the accent?
You may need to work on it if you decide to become a Briwi (British Kiwi)
Not having a problem with the accent, basically if it’s an “e” then it’s pronounced “i”, so “deck” becomes “dick”. More importantly Mrs DSL is currently on her recurring rant re N Island having a tropical climate, she feels most cheated! She was mentally geared up a la Fr Polynesia, not a la N Scotland, but luckily we’re equipped for N Japan in Jan/Feb so she’s almost dressing like that!
Re NZ, we weren’t sure what to expect, we had UK with better weather in mind (plus lots of birds we didn’t know) but the better weather was a bit optimistic. It’s familiar and friendly, our rough guide to friendliness of a place is how many peeps thank the bus driver on the way out, and it’s the most of any place we’ve been to. Could we become Briwis (assuming we could afford it and were allowed to)? We’ve only seen 2 cities but liking what we’ve seen. We’ve got another 20 days here before heading on to Fiji and will see rural/S Island NZ, that will be interesting. I could move to Aus tomorrow, mainly as there’s so much to explore off-road, but Mrs DSL is far more sensible, in that we’d get bored bouncing around corrugated tracks fairly quickly. Plus NZ has to compete with our fave pretend residency places, Vienna and Singapore.
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