We departed Hamilton at today, hungover as hell cos Lynda insisted on opening the champagne last night when we already had a tummy full of beer and wine!

We fastracked it through Auckland, over the harbour bridge, turned off at Takapuna and followed the East Coast Bays Road. We stopped at a cafe in Mairangi Bay for a gorgeous breakfast, and soooo cheap. $10 got us 2 flat whites and a bacon and egg sandwich.

We stopped at Orewa and took some photos of kite surfers. One guy wanted us to get some photos of him airborne for a French magazine.

On the road again we did a diversion to the Puhoi pub for a beer.

Our next stop was Sandspit where I caught my first fish when I was only 5 years old. (Back when I was 5 years old my Dad put my line in the water for me and said if I feel a tug to pull it in. So I felt a tug, pulled my line in, and sure enough there was a fish on the end. )

This is the spot I caught my first fish!

Mike, sister Lynda and Chrissy in a silly photo where I caught my first fish!

We then made our way towards Mangawhai heads and got lost on a dirty gravel road, but eventually came out the end.

We are staying at a friend of Lyndas place and it is very nice and comfy.

We had pasta and salad for dinner, accompanied by many beers.

The other weekend we visited Jeff and Kelly on Waiheke Island for some sun, sea and scallops. Unfortunately, while the rest of NZ experienced temperatures reaching almost 40 degrees, we struggled to reach 20 degrees on the nonconformist Waiheke Island.

But we had scallops!

Jeff went diving every day and brought us back a feast of fresh scallops.

Here’s Mike cooking them up on the barbie in some garlic butter. They were the most delicious things ever! And we ate orange bit, which for some insane reason they remove in the UK. It is the tastiest bit!

Apart from scoffing scallops we did the sculpture walk. This is where local artists take the piss by discarding a scrap piece of corrugated iron (that clearly they have no further use for) on the island, tell the council it is “art” and all the pretentious Auckland wankers “ooh” and “aah” about how it is his best work yet! And the artist pockets $30,000 from the council and laughs his head off all the way to the bank.

Seriously, the council paid $30,000 for this piece of “art”.

These little fellas were quite cute:

A snake full of pine cones:

That’s Dave by the way!

We had our 3rd Christmas day on the 20th Dec and it was a rather large affair.

There were 18 adults, 5 children and 3 dogs. All these people and still half my brothers and sisters were missing, half my nephews and nieces were missing and half the dogs were missing!

Here is a link to the photos.

Christmas Photos

It is NZ tradition to find your Christmas tree on the side of the road. So I took Mike out to show him how its done.

First, find a tree to steal

This one is a bit scrawny

This one looks just right.

Get a saw and start cutting

Bundle the evidence up in a tarp

Wrap it up so it’s well hidden

Tie it up good

Carry it to your car

Stick it on top

No one will see it there

Here are some photos of the very messy night:

Lyndas Party

Sister Jenny is hosting Christmas this year so we visited her at the farm to check out Christmas dinner.

One of these lucky lambs will take pride of place on the revolving spit:

Its not quite a turkey, but is totally home grown and way tastier:

These guys wont quite make it for this years dinner, but we got a whole year to fatten them up:

Jenny offered us some eggs laid fresh that morning, but it seemed a bit weird eating eggs straight from the chickens bum. We prefer our eggs from the supermarket.

Lucky for this guy we aren’t French:

Our last few long haul flights have been in premium economy or business class so we were wondering how we would cope in the cattle class on a busy flight.

As it was, it wasn’t too bad, so I have compiled a list of the advantages of flying economy.

1. They don’t ply you full of alcohol before take-off like the upper classes, so you don’t have a raging hangover by the time you reach Hong Kong.

2. The arm rest lifts up so I could stretch my legs out across Mike (which was good until he pushes me off and I fall down and get wedged between the crack)

3. The price is about half that of premium economy and a quarter that of business class.

4. After your meal you can just fall asleep, whereas in business class you have to get up and rearrange your seat into a flatbed. What a pain in the arse that is!

5. There seems to be less queues for the toilets (probably due to less alcohol)

6. On many occasions on empty flights we have had the middle four rows to ourselves and sometimes a row each to spread out and sleep. Unfortunately this is unlikely during the busy Christmas period.

7. Wine and champagne are served in plastic cups, so it tastes really bad and you don’t drink as much, therefore feeling much fresher after a 24 hour flight.

We decided to leave the house and join the masses of people who also decided to leave their houses to watch the free fireworks display in Poole Harbour.

It was our first attempt at fireworks photos and I think some are pretty good. Mike gets all the credit for the photos (though it is my camera and it was my idea).

Click on the link to view all the photos:

Fireworks Photos

Last weekend we loaded up our £400 car with Mich and Ems and headed up to Banbury to visit Matt and Sonia. We weren’t sure if our car would make it but it seemed to go ok. On the Saturday we caught the train into Oxford for some sightseeing.

Here is a song we wrote, sung to the tune of “Ride a Cock Horse”

Drive an old bomb to Banbury Cross
To see Matt and Sonia and drink lots and lots
Rings on our fingers and beers in our hands
Drunk and disorderly in Oxfordland

Anyway, here are a few photos of the weekend:

Oxford Photos