Category Archives: City

Anne here…

Leaving Rotorua and, based on good advice, we called into Punnets cafe on the outskirts of Cambridge for a local favourite: berries whisked into vanilla ice-cream… mmm… delish!

Cambridge is wealthy and horsey; lots of stud farms; large bungalows with well manicured lawns and is a fruit growing area. It’s very pleasant.

Hamilton is a modern multi-cultural city – the fourth largest in New Zealand. And it also made a good impression, slightly contrary to our expectations.

Waikato river from the Novotel

But it was definitely Hamilton Gardens that completely stole the show for me.
It was so good we did it twice! Well that’s not strictly true. We saw five themed gardens on Saturday but it suddenly started pouring with rain, perhaps appropriately when we were in the tropical garden, so heavily that we had to abandon our visit. But I loved it so much, I was really keen to go back this morning – a really lovely way to spend Easter Sunday morning. I enjoyed the themed gardens so much they get a blog post all of their own…

Anne here.

So exciting to see a bit of Auckland again. We keep saying to each other “do you remember this from last time?”

Although in truth we will only see a very small part of Auckland again.

Now bear with me I’m going to be very British and talk about the weather. The forecast was very dramatic – thunderbolts, lightening, cyclone strength winds. But it didn’t get as far as Auckland.

Auckland Sky Tower

Instead, after a foggy,  very humid start, we got brilliant blue skies, glorious sunshine and sparkling blue water in the harbour. Perfect holiday weather.

But it was so different to the forecast, all the locals were talking about the weather all day. We felt right at home 🙂

So after walking down the main shopping street, we spent most of our time just wandering around the harbour looking at the boats and enjoying the sunshine.

Followed by the most idyllic leisurely lunch.

Oh yes, and then there was the cannon …!