Greetings from Auckland

Hello all,

We arrived in Auckland last night and it's freezing here!! We went out for a wander and went to 'Love a Duck' Chinese restaurant which was appalling! Oh well, you live and learn.

Today we have been wandering around central Auckland, and it's a really nice city. We have been to the Sky Tower and the Viaduct Quay where we say the fattest seagull ever! It looked like it had been blown up with a foot pump.

Apologies that we don't have any photos to put up at the moment, we've taken some, but the internet cafe we're in has computers which look like they were used by dinosaurs.

Tonight we're going to take it easy, I've walked past a sort of gourmet burger place which has taken my fancy, and then we're going to go to the cinema to watch the new Terminator film - Kelly's choice!! ;-)

Tomorrow we pick up our camper van and take to the open road. And when I say open road, I mean roads covered in SNOW! The south island looks like it's absolutely covered in snow at the moment so that might affect our travel plans, we'll see. We have a couple of days on the north island first so hopefully things will clear up soon.

Hopefully we'll be able to provide you with a better update in a couple of days (with picture and everything!), and until then, take care.

Alan

P.S. Congratulations to my cousin Andy for passing his driving test, if anyone was thinking of going to Glasgow anytime soon, maybe give it a miss!

Also, congrats to Craby from York and Paul from Edinburgh (or more accurately their wives) as they've just become dads!!

Exciting few weeks coming up!!

Hey all,

Usually I start with an apology for not having blogged for a while, but I guess I should just start by saying that I will really only blog when we are up to something exciting. The last couple of weeks have been spent getting forms filled in for my new job, Kelly writing her CV, booking flights and accommodation etc etc. So nothing really blog worthy. However, the next four weeks should provide a bit more excitement which hopefully we can write about.

On Tuesday we are heading to New Zealand for almost three weeks to drive around the country in a camper van! It should be freezing! We are doing both islands, so it will be a whistle stop tour to be honest. I've done it before with a couple of Danish guys I know and had a great time, so I'm really looking forward to it. After New Zealand, we're heading to get some sun in Fiji for 10 days. We have yet to book some sort of accommodation for Fiji, but Kelly's been there before so she's in charge!! :-)

As I've said, we'll try and blog as much as possible when we're away, but we're not taking the laptop so it will rely on being able to find internet places on the road, so please don't be too disappointed if we don't put up a new one every day.

In the meantime, here are some photos from last weekend. Our friends, Chris and Sam, from Malaysia are now in Sydney and loving it. We went out to Manly for a 'few drinks' and ended up getting pretty drunk. On the way home we got off the bus and saw a Karaoke bar right beside the bus stop called 'Ding Dong Dang' and decided to wander in. This was a mistake. We ended up spending about $150 and drinking for another two hours!! It was great fun though, we had our own little room and spent two hours singing (read yelling) our lungs out.

Here are some of the dafter pictures from the night:

The night started off so well, just a few friends having some quiet drinks...............

Then Chris met a friendly tramp on the ferry back into town!! bwahahahahaha!!

Yes, the woman in front was taking ages so Kelly decided to bash her head in with a wine bottle! Luckily we managed to talk her out of it! ;-)

Good god!!!!

Which direction is the beach??

We had rehearsed this move before hand.........



So I hope you are all well at home, and unless we all get nuked by North Korea, we'll continue blogging while we're away in New Zealand and Fiji.

Take care.

Alan