Wanganui je t'aime

Mr. Millicent Crow and I were laughing the other day about how our holiday destinations are ah, less than exotic.  Give us a nice backpackers, a place to walk around taking photos and we'll be happy.  And last weekend was no exception.  We'd been meaning to go to New Plymouth, but our favourite place to stay was unavailable.  So I suggested we head further south, to Wanganui.  We drove all day, past the snowy mountains:

And stayed at the Tamara, which had the best camellia bush: 

and the best deck for ukulele playing:

 We roamed around taking lots of photos and drinking lots of coffee.  We found a wallaby skin (not pictured, too gross) draped ominously over a sign at Castlecliff  and puzzled about its origins.

We made up a new rule that if you see a circus you have to go to it.  So we did, and found ourselves sipping hot mugs of tea ringside at Circus Aotearoa.  I was terrified that I was going to be chosen to be sawn in half, but instead had to massage an acrobat, and had a clown steal a hair from my head!

And we went up the mysterious Durie Hill elevator, up the 176 spiralling steps inside the war memorial:

 
and were rewarded with this view:

and Wanganui's best kept street 1972-1977.

Which was exotic enough for me.  Paris next time maybe?

Kohukohu

We escaped the city for a couple of days over Easter and headed north to Kohukohu.  My friend told me about a place you could stay where there was a flock of white ducks, an op shop that opened on Sundays and honesty boxes selling crafts and limes and I was sold.  

 We caught the ferry to Rawene, were tempted to take home a stray dog (well I was anyway), played the ukulele by candelight when the power went out, walked many kilometres and found a whole lot of beautiful pheasant feathers.  The ingredients for a good holiday!

 

Summer's end

These photos are from back on Auckland Anniversary Day, which feels like long enough ago to be nostalgic for already.  We went up to Tawharanui for the day with a picnic, stacks of books, drawing materials, musical intstruments...  All that got done was swimming, eating and playing the ukulele.  Which was just fine.

Happy days

Beachcombing

While there have been tumbleweeds rolling through my blog, I've been out looking at sunsets. Sunsets round a fire, at the beach, with fish & chips and old friends...


I've also been doing a spot of beachcombing, collecting some shells which I'm going to turn into a gocco print. Here they are as a pencil drawing:
And speaking of beaches, I couldn't resist buying this little stamp from the Sallies yesterday:
Isn't he a sweetie?

Wellington

We had a very fleeting visit to Wellington this weekend for the Broken Heartbreakers' album launch. It usually takes us about 10 hours each way driving there because there are so many distractions on the way...