Had a good laugh this weekend. Amongst other things the opening ceremony and parade for the "America's Cup" was on.

I dunno - its a boat race or something. Apparently its important - well, it must be they're 'cause spending enough money on it ...

The "Viaduct" mobbed with people.

So we went in to see the opening parade and meet up with some other travellers.

After waiting around for the parade for half an hour, and it was just about to start, we went to the pub. Typical :-)

The instigator.

Plenty of mad boats in the harbour at the moment.

I want this one Mammy ...

On another random note ... They've no standards in this country ... Not like good old Catholic Ireland ...

Tut, tut, tut ...

We went off to see my Aunt who lives on the North Shore. Coming back over the bridge is the best view of Auckland city.

Auckland on a grim overcast day.

You invite your brother and his wife over for dinner and what do you get? A long night of pleasant conversation and banter?

Nah. You get this ...

Okay, so to be fair its not their fault. Catherine did try and kill them with her chocolate cake ...

Remember the cake that Miss Trunchbull made that kid eat the whole of on stage in Roald Dahl's "Matilda"?

I think this would have been perfect for the film.

We went to the Bay of Islands for the weekend. The bay supposedly has 144 islands (I didn't count them).

It's a real tourist spot, lots of sandy beaches, motels and restaurants, and tourists especially in Paihia, the main town in the area.

See I told ya it was touristy.

We took our "Lonely Planet" in hand and decided to walk to Haruru Falls as a nice afternoon activity. One inch on the map turned into a 2 hour muddy trek through a kiwi reserve and mangroves.

We failed to see any kiwis, I got muddy shoes, kept Mark amused with my turned up jeans and finally reached there ...

Worth it ? Ya.

We took the ferry to "romantic Russell" on our last day. Of course we nearly missed it because Mark decided to strike a "cool pose" on the wharf in order to attract all the women ... he failed miserably.

Mark on the wharf.

Russell was so pretty with long sandy beaches and lots of green areas. A "just stepped off a movie set" feel about the place.

Mark wants to move there for the summer. There seemed to be a lack of good pubs so I'm not sure how long we'd survive there.

Pretty ain't it ?

Bye, bye Paihia ...

So we decided to go and buy ourselves a decent digital camera so that we'd have loads of photos of our time in New Zealand and now I've finally got my act together and cobbled up a page to put some of them on.

This should be fun ...

Its like Christmas !