Weekend in Auckland

We had a great weekend in Auckland. It was a spur of the moment thing - Ian realised he hadn't seen the All Blacks play in an international since around 1958 (yikes...) so we matched tickets to the game with air tickets and off we flew. We stayed in Newmarket and basically didn't go far. Lots of walking and looking in shops - something we never get time to do normally. Each visit of mine to a shop is matched by watch checking. Ian never goes into shops. We really enjoyed Newmarket though and found a great restaurant - Safran - just off Broadway. Very nice food and great people. We had breakfast every morning at Zarbo.

We also visited Trelise Cooper's Kids shop - just as well we haven't any little princesses of our own or it would have been expensive. Ian spotted a princess inside looking very happy. The shop has a wonderful glass section on the floor with all sorts of little happenings underneath and the 4 change rooms were to die for. I love Trelise's designs. Very inspiring for my little art to wear efforts. You can see the glass section in this pic. And also the ceiling area above it. Quite a little fairyland.

The rugby of course was excellent and the fact that we got soaked to the skin didn't really matter in the long run. We bought $2 raincoats and had seats in the non covered area and the heavens simply opened up just before it started. I heard that the Tuba player had to be taken off the field before he drowned. Saw the thunder and lightening on the tv replay so yes - fireworks were great! And the result was excellent. Roll on the world cup. Here's Richie with the precious Bledisloe Cup.

On the Sunday we went to the Museum to the Egyptian exhibition which was great and we got up to the events section under the new dome - the view was magnificent. We sat and luxuriated there for ages.

In the events centre was the BMW car display - this is Roy Lichtenstein's. We flew home on Monday - always seems to take forever and now we are back into the usual busy busy busy. I am hoping to get up into the studio tomorrow and back to my ink book and other stuff.

We also bought a new slim and modern digital camera but we only worked out how to use it once we got home. Now we are thinking of getting a modern mobile phone as well.