(Excerpted from Cindy’s blog)
Well, we are finally ensconced in our new house. We are very happy with it. No furniture yet, but oh well. Actually, we have a dining room table and office desk that we made from interior door blanks and sets of steel saw horses we found for a pretty inexpensive price. They look great. Rick noticed that the grocery had a set of 2 faux wicker and steel chairs and a glass and steel table for $49. We bought 2 sets and voila, we now have 4 chairs for our dining “door”! And when driving to town we passed a house with a “free” sign on some stuff. We stopped and picked up a 70’s looking glass-top table and a clothes drying rack. We have plenty of tables now.
We did a day hike to Mt. Victoria, which also provided nice view of downtown Auckland. (Later we found out that they used some areas here to film Fellowship of the Ring!)
Sunday, we drove to the west coast where the beaches are black sand.
A colony of gannets (sort of seagull-like birds) nest on the rocks at one of the beaches we visited (Muriwai Beach). There is a walkway that leads up the cliff and you can look down on the birds. They mate for life and produce one egg a year. The eggs have not yet hatched. It will be fun to return to see the babies.
The second beach we visited (Piha Beach) reminded me of Cannon Beach, with a large rock called Lion Rock (a lot like Haystack rock) and a practically endless beach to walk on. The day was warm and sunny, perfect for our beach day.
Monday was New Zealand’s Labor Day, which celebrates the formation of the 8 hour work day. Rick and I walked the beach from our local town center of Milford to the next one, Takapuna. Lots of people there with families, playing and sunning. Lots of bikinis!
Our newest acquisition is a 21″ flat screen tv. I decided it was a necessity. And nicely the first movie shown on a local channel was Fellowship of the Ring. Not the extended version but we enjoyed it anyway!
Since everyone wants to know what things are like here, I have a few more items on that vein. Most houses do not have central heating (from what we were told). The apartment had 2 plug-in heating units. We thought we would look for a couple this summer when we might get them for less money. For rubbish, you buy plastic garbage bags at the grocery store. You fill them up and put them on the curb on pick-up day. No limit, put out what you need to. And they are not very expensive, something like $2 each. So no monthly garbage bill. No plastic bag recycling, you toss them.
I love the marshmallows here. Not puffy like the ones in the states that you buy in the store. These are more compact and are dome-shaped. And yummy! Rick gets them with his mocha and gives the marshmallows to me. A happy thing!