Saturday's Adventures

Hello there!

So you got to read about what we did on Friday; Im here to tell you about our fun on Saturday. We have been picking up flyers and brochures everywhere about fun things that we can do around here, since we really dont know of anything ourselves. We saw that there was this festival on Saturday called the Parnell Festival of Roses, which is in Parnell (about 20 min walk from where we are), so we hopped on a free shuttle from Downtown, and hung out here, which was right by the water, so it was absolutely beautiful. Parnell has the largest rose garden in the Southern hemisphere, so it was incredible to see the selection and diversity of the roses. There were some that were almost as big as Matt's hand (as shown below), and some bunches of roses that were not as big as our hands.

There were some of all the different colors, and as shown here, there were some super dark, that I didnt know even existed. These below were a dark plum, and there were some burnt orange (for you Justin and Gina-the colors of your wedding). I have never seen such a beautiful selection of roses. They were so amazing, and it was a lot of fun to see.

And here below, is my personal favorite rose - it was a hybrid I think. Half pink and half white! It was so crazy, and this was not just a whole bunch of these flowers. It was the only one in the pack. The rest were combos of pink, white and both colors, but this was the only half and half. They were so beautiful.

At the festival, they also had a craft faire going on, and performances too. We were hungry by the time we got there, so we decided to try and eat some lunch here. They had an "American" hot dog stand, but we have been a little skeptical about American food around here so we decided to try something completely different. Below is a picture of the stand that we ate at. It was a hingarian pastry which was deep fried bread with feta, tomato and herbs on mine and garlic and salt on Matty's. They were actually very good, and we also enjoyed a Danish milk shake with it. As you can also see, the food was very expensive (as most craft faires are), but we were impressed with our boldness in trying new foods (we're getting very good at that).

We also got some kettle corn and this sweet candy that is very similar to sour licorice, but it is filled with some other sort of sweet in it. Very interesting but really pretty good. :) All in all, it was a fun time at the festival, but the weather was funny that day. We would be really warm, then we would walk ten feet, and we would be really cold, and it didnt matter if we were in the shade or the sun, the weather was constantly changing. We are learning that we just need to take a jacket everywhere we go, no matter what.

After the festival, we headed over to the Auckland Museum, which is also in Parnell, but not close enough to walk to, so we caught the Link Bus over there, and still had to walk a little bit. It is called the Auckland War Memorial Museum, and it is HUGE!!! It is three stories and we were there 1.5 hours, and still didnt get to see it all (they closed so we had to leave). We absolutely loved it and we want to go back again so we can see the rest.

The first level is filled with Maori historical artifacts, such as this house that Maori's built a long time ago, which we were allowed to walk into, as long as we took our shoes off (Maori tradition). They also have a Maori cultural performance that is done at certain times of the day, which we missed because we went too late. We want to return to see that as well.

The second level of the museum is full of natural history of New Zealand, which included plant life, animal and bug life, and even dinosaur bones, as you can see here. This was Matt's favorite part because he (well neither of us) had never seen real dinosaur bones before. It was a lot of fun to see all this. The second level was definitely our favorite part by far.

They had tons of dead animals and bugs that were preserved and stuffed, but they also had some live animals and bugs, such as water life (fish, crab and eel), and others such as this gecko below, and live weta bugs (a HUGE cricket type bug), and even spiders (YUK!!!). But it really was fun to see the different types of bugs and animals that they have here.

Here below is a dead weta bug, but they did have some that were alive. We didnt put it up here on the blog, but we did get a picture of a weta bug that was almost the size of Matt's palm! Whoa. They make me creepy-crawley just thinking about them!

And last, but not least from the museum, the infamous Kiwi bird. This is a stuffed bird (we didnt get to see any live here), but which is the national bird who doesnt fly and sleeps all day. HAHA. They actually get pretty big here, but we havent gotten to see one yet, of course, since we are in the city :). But, this coming up weekend, we are going to try to go to the Auckland Zoo, where we will get to see all these animals actually alive! We are super excited to be able to do this. We will have to show you what we see there!

So, lastly, I went to visit Matt for lunch today, and I was walking back to the apartment when I looked at the Sky Tower... I know you guys have seen this picture before, but today when I looked at it, it had a Christmas tree, and something hanging below it...

As I got closer to it, I saw that it was a CAR hanging below the Christmas tree! Not a painting of a car, but an actual car! How in the world did they get it up there, I have no idea... Very crazy and I thought I would share it with you. We have seen a ton of Christmas decorations and advertisements around lately, and we have been wondering why they are putting them up so early, when we realized that New Zealand does not celebrate Thanksgiving (sad), but so Christmas is the next holiday here... Very different... but we are excited to get a small Xmas tree and some NZ ornaments for our first Xmas as a married couple :)

Love you all!

Carla and Matty