Just about on our way

Spent our safety buffer transit day in Auckland. Lots of random walking; the city, K road, Grey Lynn (accidentally), Parnell. Auckland Transport to and from the airport which works very well in our experience. Vicki is resting her socks

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wild Atlantic Way

Image
It's been whirlwind couple of days. We arrived in Dublin after a short flight from Glasgow, picked up a rental car (6 speed manual Mazda 2) and drove to Donegal. The rental transaction was a bit of a pain. They always want a credit card because they take a deposit using a hold. Hertz say they can't process a payment from Wise when I return the car, which sounds like a them problem. Anyway the cars perfect and mostly fits on the backroads. We quickly learned that the more digits in the road annotation, the worse things get e.g the N12345 will be suitable for nothing wider than a horse. We're loosely embarking on a tourist route known as the Wild Atlantic Way which runs down the west side of Ireland. Our first big bite of this was a loop around the north western peninsula known as the Inishowen 100. Think of rolling hills with a carpet of green grass sprinkled with sheep and stone houses leading to wild beaches and sheer cliffs. It really was a beautiful thing and as much as ...
Read more

On our way home

Image
We're in Hawaii on our way home. We have six nights here and no particular plans. Two flights and two buses from New York took nineteen hours which left us a bit strung out. United Airlines did a good job getting us here though. Slightly annoying, we needed to check our bags as they ran out of overhead cabin space. They have a bag tracker on their app so some comfort at least. The bus from Honolulu Airport to Waikiki costs three dollars but of the hundreds of people that seemed to arrive at the same time as us only one other group of travellers boarded at the airport. The usual slice of life was on offer; an elderly woman with the look of one of Hawaii's homeless population boards the bus. A few stops later a young man boards with no cash or ticket, on a ticket or cash only service. The elderly woman produses five dollars for his fare with instructions to "pray to Mother Theresa". A few stops later a couple exit the bus and give the elderly woman five dollars. The hom...
Read more

New York

Image
On our second full day in New York we decided to follow some of 'The Great Saunter', a 32 mile circumnavigation of Manhattan Island. We picked on the section below where we are staying on 45th Street, moving in a clockwise direction. This was not a great choice as much of the riverbank on the lower east side is under construction which pushed us inland through mostly unattractive urban housing estates. Once we were below Brooklyn Bridge things sorted themselves out and we were able to enjoy the extensive parks just like New Yorkers. It's hot at the moment. Roughly 30 degrees celsius with a bit of humidity so the walking is harder. The following day we jumped on a train to Cold Sping, a small town north of New York (pop. est. around 2000), up the Hudson Valley. There are mountain walks accessible by foot from town so we embarked on the Bull Hill loop which is 5.5 miles with a climb of just over 400 metres. At the trailhead a woman warned us a snake was on the path, not the i...
Read more