Christmas eve we went to the MetLife stadium in New Jersey to see the local American Football derby between the New York Jets and the New York Giants.
Fortunately it wasn’t as cold as it could have been and we had a great time. As they were the home team we were supporting the Jets but they lost!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,400 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.
We spent 4 nights in Las Vegas after our time in the VW van and to say that going from one to the other was a culture shock is putting it mildly!
Las Vegas is a bizarre place where no one and nothing could surprise you and your senses are constantly assaulted. While we were there we took a helicopter ride over the strip which was a 30th birthday present from Catie and was amazing.
I’m glad that we went but I won’t be rushing back, it is very expensive and being offered cards for prostitutes as you walk down the street and assailed by time share sales men is not my idea of a good time.
The first night at Malibu Creek State Park
Jalama Beach
Plaskett Creek, Los Padres National Forest
Basalt Campground, San Luis Reservoir (we were the only people on the entire campground)
Upper Pines Campground, Yosemite National Park
Millerton Lake State Recreation Area Campground
Buena Vista Lake Aquatic Recreation Area (we were the only people again)
We left Auckland at 2.05pm on the 25th October and arrived in Los Angeles at 6.20am on the 25th October – crossing the international date line can really mess with your head!
It was a 12 hour flight which is the longest I think I have ever done and it wasn’t actually that bad, mostly because it was predominantly a day flight so we both just watched lots of films (hangover 2 is funny, the new Transformers is rubbish!)
After we landed at LAX we got the bus to Santa Monica which was an interesting experience. We found our hotel but our room wouldn’t be available till 11.30 (feels like 7.30am to us having had no sleep) so we headed out for some breakfast. We found a great place but were really beginning to flag. Thankfully we are now in our nice room and are going to get some well deserved sleep despite the fact it is now the middle of the day!
A couple of weeks ago we flew down to Wellington to spend a few days there as up to that point we had only quickly passed through on our way on and off ferries.
We were lucky that none of the fabled Wellington weather appeared and we had 3 days of glorious sunshine. Wellington is a great city and really reminded me of Brighton in the UK, it is compact, easy to walk around, has a great waterfront and lots of cool bars and restaurants. We liked it so much that we began to seriously consider it as an alternative to Auckland and started looking at work possibilities.
Wellington Waterfront
We went on a fascinating tour of New Zealand’s parliament at the end of which we were invited in to the public gallery. We were lucky with our timing that we caught the end of question time and so were able to see the PM John Key taking questions. The most astounding thing about this was how rude the MP’s were, shouting abuse at each other across the chamber, wagging fingers, talking over each other and the speaker was as good as useless at controlling them, I thought that the UK parliament was bad but it is sedate in comparison.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings
Wellington also has an amazing museum called Te Papa. It is a completely immersive, fully interactive place which brings to life so much of the history and culture of New Zealand and I highly recommend a visit. It also has a colossal squid which is incredible, and it’s all free.
On our way back to the hotel on the 2nd day we stumbled across a massive crowd of people and had no idea what was going on until we saw the New Zealand team coach. We had walked in to the middle of a fan event with the entire All Blacks team and there they were right in front of us. We ran back to the hotel to get the camera but didn’t have anything to get signed (Catie didn’t think they would be too keen on signing the England shirt I was wearing!). We got some great photos and Catie was very excited.
We were due to fly out of New Zealand yesterday but haven’t done so. We began to realise that with Catie’s brother’s wedding and the change in plans to accommodate this we hadn’t left ourselves enough time to explore Auckland and we wouldn’t really be seeing the married couple.
This involved changing a couple of flights, first our flight to LA then our onward connection to Costa Rica. We were able to change both of these fairly easily and it just meant a £400 hit which we were prepared to pay. We originally had 6 weeks in Costa Rica so have just cut this to 4 and will now leave NZ on the 25th October. This means we have extra time in Auckland, plus we get to go and stay with Andrew and Helen and we will still be here for the rugby world cup final.
After the somewhat disappointment of Sri Lanka ( I will get around to writing a post about this), and the hustle, bustle, dirt and craziness of India, Singapore was an oasis of calm and quiet efficiency.
Singapore the city has a population of more than New Zealand but sits on a tiny island which takes less than an hour to drive across. We arrived off a midnight flight from Sri Lanka at 6am Singapore time and headed to our hotel really hoping that they would take pity on us and give us a room so that we could get some sleep.
Unfortunately the hotel had been fully booked the night before so they had no available rooms but they promised to let us have one as soon as they had a cleaned one available. So we ate some breakfast and made use of the amazing pool before we both fell asleep on sun beds. I woke up an hour later feeling dazed and confused and went to the front desk to see if our room was ready. Thankfully by now it was and we gratefully crashed out but not before we had admired the view from our corner room.
The view of the pool from our room:
The view at night from our room:
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