Day 66 – Leaving Auckland/Arriving in Sydney

My flight to Sydney wasn’t until late afternoon at 4pm, so I had the morning to organise and repack my bag, chuck things I had gained for cooking etc away as I won’t need these anymore and just chill out until my flight. Had some breakfast, watched some TV and Stuart came and picked me up about 1pm. The airport isn’t that far away and on arrival I was the only person checking in, so I did that without a fuss and was on the other side in no time. My flight took off about 5 minutes early, we landed 30minutes early because of good wind, my bag was about the 5^th one out and I walked through customs without a hitch. WHAT HAS HAPPENED?! I’m not complaining but that is far from normal, I hope this is the beginning of good luck with my flights.

I got the train from the airport straight into the city and it was only a 10minute walk to where Valerie lives. So it took just under an hour from when my flight landed to walk through the door, which was amazing!

She had netball that evening so I just chilled out, watched home and away (as you do) went to woolworths and grabbed some dinner and just caught up with her when she came home. You can see a small amount of the opera house from her balcony and you can see the coca cola sign, which is cool!

Day 65 – Officially half way through my travels!

To celebrate being half way I basically did nothing all day. I had my breakfast, read some of my book and then decided I should really get out of the house, so I decided to go for a little run/walk. I ran down Highland Avenue (where they live) then the next road, when I discovered a park, so obviously I had to go and test out the swings. It was quite hard because the seat is a bendy bit of plastic instead of the rigid seats you get in the UK so I found it quite awkward to pull on the chains to actually swing, I managed it but my 5 minutes of fun was over. I walked through some alleyways and found a shop, which you can actually see from Stuarts house and looks really far away. I decided to pop in, grab and ice cream and slowly walk back, I was probably only gone about an hour and a bit but it was long enough for me.

I also feel like I should give a round up of things/music/books etc, so here it goes! (More for my benefit than anyone else’s, feel free to ignore)

Songs that remind me of my trip so far:

Clean Bandit ft Jess Glynne – Rather Be

Magic – Rude

Pitbull ft Ke$ha – Timber

Katy Perry – Dark Horse

Aloe Blacc – The Man

Lily Allen – Hard Out Here

Eddie Rabbitt - I Love A Rainy Night

Books I’ve read:

Rainbow Rowell – Eleanor & Park

John Green – Looking for Alaska

Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games, Catching Fire & Mockingjay

Bill Bryson – The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (Currently reading)

Markus Zusak – The Book Thief (Currently reading)

Movies I’ve seen:

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

Andy Murray Documentary

The Wolf of Wall Street

The Hunger Games 1&2

Day 64 – Sun, Sea and Sand!

Once again the weather was super nice so we spent some of the day at Cornwallis beach. I had fun with the kids building sand castles and swimming in the sea. The sea was actually quite warm which makes a change from home and all the fresh water lakes I had been to in the rest of New Zealand. The rest of it was spent just lazing about and watching tv, I watched The Jungle Book if you really want to know. We had Lamb for dinner and that is the first time I’ve ever eaten it, I can’t say I’m that fussed.

Day 63 – Kiwi show!

It’s funny when there are kids in the house, the idea of a lie in is just a dream you think about. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little as I was sleeping on the bottom floor so technically the basement, which means I managed to escape and didn’t go upstairs until 10. I was greeted with a mini fry up, an excellent way to start the day!

We then left the house and made our way to the Kumeu Show or as they call it the Kiwi show. This show is based in; yep you guessed it Kumeu, which is just north of Titirangi/Auckland. It brings together exhibitors from all over New Zealand to compete their cattle, alpacas, sheep etc as well as competitions in highland dancing and wood chopping, this event is held annually on 80 acres of land and there are 500 trade spaces sold every year. Obviously we went to see all of this but the main reason Lyla wanted to go was to go on the travelling fair rides! We spent a few hours here before leaving and going on a short bush walk where Lyla taught me all about Cicadas. When walking in the bush or pretty much anywhere near trees and stuff you can hear a constant sound, like Grasshoppers I guess and this is the Cicadas squeezing out of their skin and when they do this they leave behind their shell which you can find just stuck to trees. Lyla found a few and showed them too me, I didn’t think I’d ever really learn anything from a 5 year old, but she has proved me wrong.

For dinner we had noodle box takeaway, which I loved, I’m so excited to arrive in Asia and eat proper Asian food!

Day 62 – Pretty boring day…

I feel like I’m playing a bit of a waiting game. I’m only back at Stuart’s because I have a flight out of Auckland on Tuesday. Yeah it’s nice to come back, share my stories with them and have fun but if I was to redo this trip I would do like most people I met and fly out of Christchurch but hey ho it is the way it is and I can’t complain to be stuck in New Zealand when the weather is nice and it really is great just to chill out for a few days in a family home after the crazy month on the bus and before I fly back to Australia. It’s also good to do some washing and hang up my clothes, even if it is just for a few days! So really my day was washing, reading, watching tv, eating, sleeping etc.

Once the kids were home I played with some Dinosaurs, did some colouring in; seriously Blue Peter should have snapped me up when they had the chance!