Today was the first of four full days with the Padrutts. I'm sure that it is not nearly long enough for Daniel or Michael! Today would be our day to get our bearings in Auckland which is the largest city in New Zealand containing 1.4 million people but however is not the capital city, which is Wellington. We were honoured by Andy and Judy as they put together a most excellent breakfast that was far different to any other breakfast we had had while we have been in New Zealand. We had a wide selection of cereals and spreads for toast.
After our marvellous breakfast we prepared ourselves and packed lunch for our day out on the town. The girls plus DJ and Michael were in our car while Andy, Paul and both of the Joshuas were in Andy's car, we also had walkie-talkies so we could communicate between the cars. We set off on a small drive to the suburb of Davenport, which is an expensive area near the beach where British people like to retire to. In Davenport we climbed another hill named Mount Victoria, which is one of the seven hills of Auckland. Once at the top we had a very nice view of Auckland, it is very spread out, much like Adelaide but it is over a series of bays and and peninsulas which are connected together by a series of bridges, with the largest sharing a name with the city. At Mount Victoria there were pieces of cardboard boxes which were used to slide down the steep sides of the hill. We had fun, sliding down there and everyone but Judy and Andy joined in, Paul got a fair decent grass stain on his elbow after stacking on the slide.
Once we finished up at Mount Victoria, DJ, Josh (Elder &Younger) Michael and Paul walked down to a park beside the beach while the others were lazy and drove to the park and met us there. Once we found each other we continued to walk along the beach up until a ferry terminal, where we decided to go for a drive to a nicer beach known as Mission Bay. Here we had a picnic on the park next to the beach. It was quite interesting to see so many people in bathers or “togs” as the Kiwis called them, attempting to get a tan in weather that is less than 20ºC when we have temperatures more than double in Adelaide alone! Joshua (the Elder) found it quite cute. We each had cucumber, cheese or cream cheese on our sandwiches, except Daniel who had to be picky and had a plain piece of bread.
After coming back down from the hill we drove around the actual city of Auckland and saw someone jumping off the Auckland Tower, which for some reason, Kiwis like doing. We also had a drive through some development houses akin to those in Mawson Lakes but all the houses were the same, the only difference was the brick colour which was absolutely bizarre. We arrived home, and everything was very chilled, time seemed to slow down as Judy and Mazz prepared dinner, Michael attempted to fly his helicopter, Lara chased Daniel around poking each other, Josh (the Younger) was messing around n his Ipod and playing on the piano, Josh (the Elder) read on his e-reader and wrote a letter to his grandparents and Andy and Paul were gardening. Dinner was prepared and we sat down to a wonderful barbecue. After dinner we were treated to a traditional Maori Haka performed by Michael and Josh (the Younger) but was postponed to a later time as Josh was embarrassed to do it, and Michael couldn’t do it by himself.
After dinner it was starting to get late so Josh (the Younger) put on Rise of the Guardians which had been graciously gifted to them by friends from Australia and watched it with the other children. The parents decided to chat over some wine before playing some much waited for games of Dog, a board game similar to trouble but played with cards and can cause heated discussions as they have experienced before with one of the players loudly exclaiming something he probably shouldn’t have but who shall remain nameless. While Josh was left to write the blog as his parents who normally do were busy having fun.
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