When I was a kid I was a Yankees fan - I lived in NYC. My father was a NY Giants fan. We occasionally listened to games on the radio and I went with my father to several games at the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field and the original Yankee Stadium. And to several more at Yankees games with a school friend. Then I lost interest ( Read more... )

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Today was our last full day in NZ. We went to the Waiputua Forest which contains a number of Kauri trees. The Kauri is a huge native tree many of which have been cut down. Tane Mahuta is thought to be the largest one and is known as "The God of the Forest". The trunk was about 17 meters in girth and about 51 meters high. We saw several other huge ( Read more... )

We left Auckland yesterday and drove up north to the Bay of Islands, staying at Paihia. There still are a couple of hundred more kilometers to get to the northern-most point but we aren't going that far. On the way up we stopped at the Hundertwasser Toilets. He lived in NZ for a while before his death and this was one of his projects. I've always ( Read more... )

Now we are in Auckland. We are staying in a nice B&B in the outskirts of the city that is just off a lively street with lots of cafes, restaurants, and other stores.The B&B is called The Great Ponsonby; I recommend it - the only drawback is that wireless doesn't work in our room which is in a separate building (its a really nice room) - much of the ( Read more... )

We spent two nights in Rotorua. Rotorua is in an extremely volcanic area and there are a number of tourist sites that let you wander around and see mud pools bubbling away or small ponds with steam rising from them and strong colors from the sulphur and other minerals that are in the water. Much of the area around the town smells of rotten eggs. ( Read more... )

In 1931 a 7.8 earthquake demolished Napier. They rebuilt it quite rapidly (it was during the depression) and many of the buildings are in Art Deco style. There has been a preservation movement, but some of it is kind of messed up because of signs on the marquees and buildings, but there is lots of nice detail. It is an interesting city (small with ( Read more... )

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During our stay in Wellington among other things we went to see St Paul's and Old St Paul's Cathedrals. St Paul's is a huge modern Anglican church built in 1964 but only recently finished. One of the interesting things about this building was the history of the bells. Eight of them came from a church in Northampton, England that had been demolished ( Read more... )

We are staying in the Museum Hotel in Wellington. It gets its name from strange circumstances. It was built in 1987 and a NZ stock market crash in 1990 caused it to go bankrupt. The government bought it to help out the owners and leased it to some new people. Then they decided to build a museum on the site and in a very special project moved the ( Read more... )