Picture Time!

This is when you should cringe. Like when an uncle wants to do a slideshow of his trip to the Grand Canyon - it'll only take a couple hours. What else do you have to do?

Had a great time this weekend and here are some photos. First, at long last I took some photos of where I live. So here is my flat (We are the top floor of the building):



And My Street:



Saturday we hoped in the car by 9AM and drove north letting a coin flip be our guide. As it turned out heads took us to the west coast.



And holy hell, yes that is four of us in a Mini Cooper!

We ended up in small town and back roads via our coin destiny, and took advantage of empty roads for a group photo.



Driving through NZ countryside I was amazed at how pretty it is so I have to throw in at least one blurry from the car shot:



We even ended up going through some town that was is the "Gum Boot Capital of New Zealand". I still have issues with the accent, so I asked the 'what' boot. To which they responded, you know Wellingtons. I then proceeded to become more confused. Finally I realized we were talking about rain boots. The 'ol gumboot capital will never be the same.



(By the way we're jumping off a giant corrugated iron gum boot, gotta love small towns)

We finally ended up in Taupo for the night where we checked in to the last beds in town. Ran down to the hot tub and enjoyed a night of hot tubing, playing pool, pizza, and finally out to the bars.

Next day we were up slowly and had just enough energy to get breakfast and then lie down in the grass along lake Taupo and soak up the sun. Eventually we decided to get picnic foods and start back south along the east coast.

The weather was incredible and view was even more stunning. We stopped at a hill, jumped a fence, and ran up the hill for a picnic - only to be blown away by the view. (or at least as a foreigner I was)

The Car:



The Walk:



The View (You should click on this one to see it big):



And the gratuitous group shot:



Finally a picnic later in a sunny field (the sheep hill had too many remnants of it's inhabitants)

And then we arrived in Napier for a winery tour. Beautiful place, gorgeous day, and as we strolled around some vintage Rolls Royce’s showed up with a wedding party. It was idyllic.



Finally we hopped back in the Mini, tuned into "Mini FM" (My iPod) and enjoyed the rest of our 20 odd hours of music we heard throughout the weekend.

Slept like a rock only to wake up to a Monday off! I love Labour Day in any country!

It was rainy but pleasant, saw the movie "The World's Fastest Indian". Did this get shown much back in the states? If so you should see it, the accent is dead on and the character is very "Kiwi".

Hope you all enjoyed your weekends! Cheers from down under.