Pam's 2 Day Trip Which Turned into a 3 Day Trip/Longest Blog & Title Ever

Hi,

First of...I made it back safely from my travels...there is LOTS to write about so I hope you all have some time to read this...and appreciate all the time and effort i put into it :)



Monday 08 Dec 2008





On Monday morning, around 9am I left to drive up to Cambridge...it was about a 3 hour drive. I passed some cool things on the way up...like windy roads along cliffs and beaches, and forests. This is a pic of the "city" of Cambridge...it was quite quaint.

In Cambridge I went to the "Deli on the Corner" for lunch. I got a Thai Chicken wrap and here it is...everything is served up this way when you go out to lunch pretty much anywhere...you get a little salad and things to dip your food in :) I like it.

I visited St. Andrews Anglican Church...it's one of the oldest in New Zealand I guess. And a lady came showed me around the church telling me stories of how there are memorials to Kiwis who fought in WWI in it, especially for liberating this town in France (i forget the name)...it was pretty inside...arched ceilings, stained glass....she started asking me about my churches in my towns and what kinds we had....i was just like ummm...they're old....? haha. I told her to have a lovely Christmas.

I got pretty excited when I saw this sign on my way to Matamata...I do think it's funny though how they call it a "tourist farm" hahaha....they really mean a there is a farm you can look at, and the movie set is on a farm...but tourist farm just sounds so funny....it is a tourist farm. hehe.

While in Matamata, I had some time to kill before i could check into the B&B I was staying at so I went to the Firth Tower Museum...it's just an old homestead of the Firth's...they had a tower built as like a lookout...

Here is me in front of the museum...I looked through the house, the museum, and some of the other buildings....I'm not going to lie...it was interesting for about 15 minutes then i got bored...but i had nothing else to really do so i made myself do it haha...and i felt bad because the lady who let me in was excited someone was actually there haha. it was cool to go up in the tower tho.

Here is me in the Firth homestead....

Matt-this pic I thought you would find interesting...they had a portable blacksmith's table.

Leave it to me to find the only thing about dinosaurs in a museum a tower :)

Um...this is a really small pic of the place I stayed...I didn't take a pic of it when i was there...and I this was the only pic i found online. It was called the Tudor Park Country Stay B&B. It was really nice...I had my own room with my own bathroom...it felt quick luxurious actually....and the house was really nice inside too. The owners, John and Anne Price also raise calves, and horses. Matamata is really famous for it's horse breeding...race horses. The Price's have a horse racing now who is doing really well. I would like to go to a horse race sometime...at least once.



Tuesday 09 Dec 2008

HOBBITON!!!!! YAYYYY!!! :) There are 17 hobbit houses left on display here. (don't ask what I'm wearing...I wasn't expecting it to be cold and rainy). So, this is on a sheep farm, the Alexander's sheep farm. They were supposed to take down all of the Hobbiton sets after movie production was done, but it was too rainy for them to take them down...so this is as far as they got....and the Alexanders asked the production Co. if they could keep them and start a tour company themselves. Which....obviously worked so all of us LOTR fans can go visit :)
The big hobbit house on top of the hill on the left is Bagend (frodo and bilbo's house).

This is the tree where gandalf sets off some fireworks...i kinda wasn't paying attention when she was talking about it, so i'll have to watch the movies again to find it...i think it's in the first movie when he sets them off for the little kids....only the branch he drives under has broken since then.

Here is a better pic of Bagend...all those windows on top.

Here is a view of the big tree they have Bilbo's birthday party under...and the field the part is in, and the lake the dragon firework flies over! they had little picture boards like that all over so you could see what it was like in the movie.

Here is me with the party tree in the background. I'm standing on top of Bagend :)

Here is me in Bagend! :)

Here is me looking outside from Bagend and the party tree is to my right hehe. I took so many pictures here....

After the tour of hobbiton...our tour guide pointed out a lot more little spots and told some stories...but i don't think everyone wants to hear about them...and i have too much more to write about.....So after the tour....we got to watch a sheep get shorn.

And feed and pet some cute little baby lambs :)

After Hobbiton, I drove over to Hamilton which was like 40min away. I went to the Waikato Museum of Art and History (which wasn't very big)...and I got bored again...I find i don't know what to do with myself walking around alone. It's weird and i get bored really easily. Anyways...so I was in the museum bathroom and took a pic of my myself trying to be arty haha.

When I didn't know what to do in Hamilton anymore (I walked around and looked in shops)...I drove to Raglan (another 40 min). I really liked Raglan...it was a very cute (small) beach town. Very relaxed and everyone was nice.

And...the main road was lined with palm trees :) (sorry the truck is in the way...i took the pic while driving). I stayed in a backpackers called Belindsey's...it was a cool old house which they rented out rooms. I shared a room with a guy from Switzerland. There were also people from Austria, England, South America, and California staying there!



Wednesday 10 Dec 2008

Here is another pic of Raglan with the bay in it. A couple of rivers run into it. Today was nice and sunny. :) It took me a little while to get going this morning because I had left my car lights on all night and had to walk into town to find someone to jump it for me. I found a cute kiwi boy at a garage to do it :)

This is Ngarunui Beach where I went surfing! Raglan is known for good surfing, so I had to check it out. And, it was good! Lots of nice waves, beautiful location...I did alright surfing too - as in i got up on my board hehe. There were a lot of people though so it was a little crowded.

Here is the beach from standing on the sand.

Here is me, happy after a good morning of surfing :) I really wish I could get someone to take a picture of me while surfing! And, I hate wetsuits even if they are helpful...they are so hard to get on and off! (or i just haven't figured out the trick yet)

After surfing, I go up to my car....and the battery is dead...again. It must not have charged enough the first time I jumped it....so it took me probably a half hour to find someone with jumper cables!! ah! they call them jumper leads over here. Anyways....once that was done, i went back to where I was staying, took a quick shower (and left my car running while i did that to charge the batter)...and went to go do some sightseeing! This is the kid of picture you get when you have take them by yourself....but anyways...this is Manu Bay...gorgeous!

Oh yea...I just thought this pic was cool because if you look in my sunnies, you can see me holding the camera up and the ocean in the background. Do you ever see pictures of yourself andnot recognize yourself in them? this is kinda one of those for me.

Manu Bay

Umm....me in front of the bay again (like my new shirt? :) )

Looking the other way down the bay. If you make the pic bigger, you can see all sorts of little bays and inlets along the coast line. The like next big bay over is the one i went surfing in (the one that is like circled with the white waves).

After Manu Bay, I decided to go to Bridal Veil Falls. In my guide book, it says to be careful going there because there are often car thefts...Ok.....So when I get there look at the sign they have posted! AH! (i locked my doors and hid everything in my car haha)

It was pretty windy from the lookout platform above the falls!

Here are the falls. I forget how tall they are...

Me in front of the falls...proof i was there! haha.

After Bridal Veil Falls, I drove back to Hamilton because I had something planned in Hamilton for that evening. This is just a cool road pic I took.

Once back in Hamilton, I went to the Hamilton Gardens. They were really cool! One part of them had like different examples of gardens from around the world...like this one is Italian renessaince.

This one is and Indian one...like one a royal person would have....each little garden was like stepping into another world...they had like english gardens, japanese, chinese...american

I went into the American Modern garden...and just had to relax in one of the chairs and pretend that I was back in America haha. I don't really see how it was American, other than the fact that they had a tile mosaic of Marilyn Monroe haha.

Me, taking a break in the shade because the afternoon sun was really HOT! (I have so many freckles!)

After the gardens, I had a little costume change...something a little nicer (it's like a little flowy dress thing) because...

I went to the ballet! I saw the Royal New Zealand Ballet perform Don Quixote!! (this is the pic from the the poster for it). Everyone got really dressed up for it, I was a little underdressed...I wish I had some nicer clothes with me! The ballet was good...I kinda forget parts of the story, so at some points it took me a little bit to remember what was going on, but I still enjoyed it! I was half expecting them to play that Don Quixote song from the movie, but they didn't hehe. Anyways...it was very enjoyable...I like going to the ballet.

Thursday 11 Dec 2008

I drove home after the ballet and got home around 115am this morning...so I'm a little tired today. I spent most of my day chopping out gorse, wooly nightshade and brambles with inch long thorns out of the road frontage hedge. I chopped down my first 2 trees with an axe....chopping with an axe is freakin hard! i don't know how people do it quickly haha.

Jon and Jenny have some friends staying with us for a couple days. They are nice...they just got here today.

And I got a big surprise this morning when I woke up. Jon and Jenny are taking me to Coramadel with them and their fam for Chrissy (xmas) :) !! Coramandel is like beach paradise!!! YAY!! :) I am excited hehe :) Beach for Christmas...sounds nice huh? :)

So...that is all my very long news for now :) I hope you both and enjoyed and got through all of it haha. I probably forgot something I wanted to add..but oh well. I'm tired and it's almost dinner time!

P.S. I figured out why it takes so long to drive anywhere in NZ...it's not necessarily the distance...it's because there are NO highways like we have...like you have to drive through every small little town you get to and go like 30mph through it, there is no way to bipass them...AND, all the road are really windy...I was driving on this one "main" highway that was like basically hairpin turns for like a 1/2 hour....and the max speed limit anywhere is 100 km/hr which is like 60mph...and half the time you can't even drive that because the roads are too turn-y. So yea...it takes a long time to drive anywhere....