Category: Travel

The big trip to New Zealand is over but because of various technical issues like not having a cable to get pictures off the camera, Ebola, actually not having much on a daily basis to report and being south of the equator which made everything upside down a summary report is needed. That will be provided here.

Mary and I were meeting in Auckland. I was to arrive about 6:30 am and she was to get in about 2 pm. I arrive and take a shared van to the hotel and got there about 9:30 and was actually able to check in that early. Settling in I found that I didn’t have enough plug adapters as they use more of the China standard as opposed to the European or US standard. The lobby of the hotel is on the fourth floor of the building because it is built on a hill and there are 4 floors of shops and restaurants below. One shop was a China guy that sold all kinds of trinkets suitcases shirts and electrical things like adapters. I bought 2 and was in charging heaven. While waiting for Mary I walked around the block and hung out in the room. I learned that there is major construction in front of the hotel as they are building a train station underneath it. Mary got here and we had dinner at an old steakhouse in the hotel block as noted below. We walked around Auckland, which is quite hilly, for the rest of the day and it about killed us.

The next morning we used the excellent bus system to go to a rose garden and some old lady’s garden. Mary determined that the old lady’s garden is what she wants the Rona Garden to become as seen here.

The next day we took the excellent bus system to the general location of the Auckland museum. This was a huge park with an arch with this guy on top.

The park had many cricket fields and open areas and the walk to the museum was about a mile I would guess. This was the start of the walk. You can see the guy above in the background.

After trekking the better part of a mile, mostly uphill our destination was within sight and of course uphill.

The museum of course focused on New Zealand and Polynesian history. To me the most impressive thing was a longboat built in the mid 1800’s. This boat was really long and quite impressive.

That night we had an Italian dinner after which Mary came down with the Ebola which more or less wiped out the next day, Friday. Saturday morning we checked out and headed to the ferry to travel to Waiheke Island. This was about a 40 minute ferry ride and once we got there and evaluated the situation we decided to rent a car even though they us RHD here which means driving on the wrong side of the road. As it turned out this was one of the better decisions we made as if we hadn’t getting around would have been problematic even though there were buses. The roads were all 2 lane and speeds never got much above 30 so driving was not that big a deal as it turned out. There were a coupe village areas and the rest were just houses and park like areas. As opposed to what you would find in the US the houses were just normal not big mansions and obviously vacation homes and rentals. The island had many wineries and half of it was pretty much wild uninhabited area. Only 1800 people actually lived there. Any thing you did on the island you had to share with sea gulls, like eating breakfast.

Off in the distance you could see Auckland.

There were many bays and inlets around the island.

A few sandy beaches.

So after a couple days wandering around the island it was back to Auckland to catch our flight to Christchurch on the south island. During that flight my case of Ebola kicked in and the rest of that day was limited in activity but we did find a laundry to wash clothes.

The next day we headed into the central area by way of the trolleys and got to the botanic gardens. Christchurch had an earthquake in 2011 that pretty much destroyed the entire central business district. (link) The people living there decided not to build over 4 stories which you can see how that works here.

The botanic garden was the usual botanic garden with flowers and stuff, although they did have big trees.

There is a small river that runs through Christchurch and seems to be involved in everything going on there.

After a few days it was off to Wellington at the Southern end of the North island and the capital of New Zealand. Wellington is a very hilly city and because of it being on a bay and the passage between the two islands we learned that it is also a shipwreck mecca. The wind and weather patterns are apparently quite tricky here. Across the street from the hotel was the entrance to the funicular that took us to one of the hills overlooking the city and what we thought were the botanic gardens although the gardens did come into play until we had walked clear down the other side of the hill.

A couple views of part of Wellington and harbor from the top of the funicular hill.

As we walked down the hill passing trees such as this,

and flower things such as this,

we finally get to the rose garden which is not as impressive as the other ones we have been to but a rose garden nonetheless.

The next day was the day we were to go do a cooking and learning about Van Gogh  thing at some New Zealand lady’s house. Turns out she was born in the US and lived all over the place and has lived in New Zealand for the last 12 years or so. We learned about the Van Gogh guy, cut up some green leafy things and cooked some bread stuff. Here is a live action shot of Mary talking to Randi as we are waiting outside the hotel for a taxi to take us to this event.

Also, as a cultural side note I do prefer their give way signs to our yield signs.

The hotel we stayed in was an older hotel that had been redone. They had genuine, now hard to find, Otis elevators. of the famous Otis and the Elevators famous song “I’ve got the ups and downs for you”

With Wellington done it was back to Auckland for a couple days. Other than just wandering around the main thing we did was go up into the Sky Tower that is is the big landmark in Auckland and is taller than the Empire State Building. Here you can see it in a picture taken from a park on top of a big ass hill near the hotel.

Of course once we got up there the vertigo kicked in and because of that you are required to look at all the pictures we risked our life to take.

Here is a famous Auckland bridge.

Looking to the NE.

To the N-NW

This picture to the West has the big park and museum we visited the first day.

Part of the central city and the port.

A big car hauler and part of one of the 2 cruse ships in port this day.

Well that’s not all of them but I guess it is enough. The next morning at 4AM Mary gets up to leave to catch her 6:30 am flight back to China. I have to check out of the hotel at 11 am but my flight is not until 7:45 so I have to kill most of the afternoon before going to the airport. I get there late afternoon and spend a couple hours eating free stuff in the lounge and go to the gate only to ultimately be told we would be leaving 1.5 hour late. So after more that 12 hours after I got up we are on the way and I got back home about 8:30 Friday night thus ending the great New Zealand adventure where I assume that it is still summer and people are still eating.

The last day in Christchurch had us needing to checkout and kill time until our 6:15 flight to Wellington. So we spent time walking around looking for dumplings since it was the New Year and you have to eat dumplings on the new year to get you some of that good Chinese luck. As a result here we are.

Yep, still here, still summer and still eating.

Still here, still summer still eating.

We left Waikeke Island Monday morning after driving around the island in a RH drive car and eating food. Our activities were somewhat subdued by The Ebola. Thursday after our big Italian dinner Mary came down with The Ebola fever shivers and sore throat. That left Friday in Auckland mostly sitting in the hotel fighting a courageous battle against this disease. By Saturday morning we got on the ferry for the island and the 2 days of slow paced wandering around helped win the battle. This is where I would post some award winning photos   of this time but I didn’t bring the cable to get the pictures off my camera. So here is one from the phone of one of the many bays.

So when we left Monday morning we had a ferry ride back to Auckland, a train and bus ride to the airport and ultimately an early afternoon flight to Christchurch. About the time we got on the train I started getting a sore throat and by the time we landed in Christchurch I was in full blown Ebolan fever and shivering. By next morning I was good enough to get out so we bought tickets for the center city trolley that gets you about everywhere there is to go in Christchurch. (population about 400000)

An action shot of one of the trolleys.

We spent the day getting on and off this thing. Mary bought some stuff we ate some food, it was still summer. So last night my case of The Ebola advanced to the head 100% plugged up stage that prevented using the breathing machine or for that matter breathing which of course impacted sleep. I didn’t get much. Today in spite of the Ebola issues we took in the Botanic Gardens and looked at the botany. We spent most of the day doing this and here are some of the botany we saw.

Here’s what our fiddle leaf fig could become if we worked on it and added about 20 feet to our ceiling.

Many many big trees her not only in the park but everywhere.

So finally today Mary just had to eat so she had some Jap crap at a place that is about a block from the hotel and also the first stop on the trolley route. I watched because we are still here and it’s summer.

We still have Thursday and half of Friday here and at this point we are more or less out of things to see or do since we can’t wind surf or mountain climb plus rain over night so we will see what happens before we head to Wellington which is an even smaller city, although we are to go eat some flowers out of some woman’s garden while she talks about artist guys. Hopefully it will still be summer.

Still here, it’s still summer and we are still eating.

We got here, it’s summertime and we are eating.

We arrived at the train station about 6 PM after a 4 hour ride from London. The hotel was about 4 blocks away and no taxi wanted to take us. Central Edinburgh was extremely busy, like wall to wall people busy so we hauled our bags uphill to the and checked in.  Looking for a place to eat we found everything was filled and booked. It seemed there was a big concert and other things going on that night. We did finally get some food and called it a night. It should be noted that Edinburgh is almost as far north as Stockholm or even Anchorage so being about 3 weeks away from the solstice  means it is still light at 10:30 in the evening and light before 5 in the morning. While walking around looking for a place to eat we found that all statues apparently are required to have a seagull.

Randi got in about 9 and we were ready to start the big tour Sunday morning.

Sunday morning we went to the Botanical Gardens and walked around and had a couple hour tour. Had a lot of nice trees and flowers, like these nice blue ones.

For the most part the entire place was similar to this.

Edinburgh was a medical center during the 18th and 19th centuries so Sunday afternoon we visited the surgery museum. Since no photography was allowed inside because of having body parts skeletons and other stuff this is the outside.

It was not clear if they ever figured out what made these people green. After a wonderful dinner that night, I just don’t remember where although it might have been an Italian place we walked around. Somewhere along the way this picture was taken.

Monday brought an agenda of  lunch at the Witchery, a high end restaurant that is one of those eat in the dark big plate small food places, and a visit to the Edinburgh Castle.  The bus stop to leave to the castle area.

One building on the way had a statue of a guy playing quoits for some reason.

We get to the restaurant and the guy seats us and we order. I had the cold raw meat with a raw egg on top and fries. For those that understand such things I shot this at ISO 6400 just to show how dark the place was.

After lunch we walked up the street to the castle. I should note that all streets are uphill in Edinburgh.

Like most castles it had a bunch of history stuff. Because it is built on top of a big hill overlooking the city it has a lot of views.

With most of the city North of the castle when looking south things quickly evolve into countryside.

If you were one of the many cannon operators you had this view.

Listening to some important historical information.

After the castle visit and a late afternoon rest we wen to a 100+ year old pub for some pub food. The food was not great but the pint was OK and to top it off but who would come in and sit right beside us, that right, Mr and Mrs King Chuck King of England.

Randi was of the opinion that it was not them but I’m not so sure.

Tuesday we got on one of those bus things and rode around looking at stuff. London that was OK. Here it was pretty much all the same and not so good. We had a noon lunch at an oyster bar so we got off the bus and walked a few blocks uphill to the restaurant. I had the fish and chips but Mary and Randi had like half the fish in the ocean.

Late afternoon we went for a tour of the underground area which is whats left of some of the 1600 era streets and houses. It’s directly under city hall so no pictures but it did exhibit life of that time and the last plague that killed about 1/3 of the 30000 population.

Randi left to return home this morning and Mary and I will probably hit up a museum this afternoon to finis up our trip. Then tomorrow back to London to return home Friday.

Wednesday morning we headed out via the famous London tube system to the British Library gaze upon the Magna Carta. Upon gazing it looked like this.

From there we went to the British museum and looked at a lot of old stuff.

Thursday was the big Flower show. This was a thing that went on all week and is apparently a really big deal. King Chuck King of England spent Monday there. There was maybe 1/2 to 1 mile long street with booths of people selling flower stuff. There were a number of competition show gardens and a big building with another huge quantity of flower stuff. Heading into the big show.

One of the displays was from a guy that spent an awful amount of time carving trees and apparently trying to sell them.

One aspect of this show was to demonstrate that middle age and old English women are world class at elbowing their way through crowds to get where they want. Around the show gardens the crowds would be 5 or 6 deep and these ladies would get right up front in no time. From this picture about 80% of the way down the main street you can see some of these women with their armed elbows.

The big time winning Japanese garden had this weird big wall of growing things that no one is quite sure how they did it but it was quite soft.

We spent most the day there and were quite tired when we were done.

Today we did one of the  hop on hop off bus things to get us around all of London. This is not the bus.

Our bus was like the one on the left.

We wondered around the Trafalgar square  house of parliament area. This shot like maybe 100000 others taken today from the bridge over the Thames by all the other tourists that were there.

Looking to your right you have this view of the river and the Eye of London.

Ol’ Big Jim Bob (or what ever the name is) has a lot of extra doodads. And as an added benefit we were there to hear it strike 12.

About 3 blocks away is the square where we took the opportunity to have some genuine fish and chips.

The view out of the window.

This from 1 bridge up river is the last we saw of central London.

Our final stop of the day was Buckingham Palace. I thought that I finally might meet up with King Chuck King of England but when we got there only tourists were in attendance. The palace itself is just this big building that apparently we were not allowed to enter.

It does have a nice gate to keep us commoners out.

Out front they had a big statue thing with this golden thing on top. Don’t know if it is anyone famous.

Since we were only about a half mile from the hotel through a, as they say here, lovely park we started back to the hotel through it. We found a bench part way and had a sit to soak up some sun and watch people.

I looked around and thought “holy crap is that Mr. and Mrs. King Chuck King of England?” I thought about it and decided it most likely was not because they were not wearing the hats with all the diamonds and stuff on them.

So, with London done tomorrow it is off to Scotland. I’ve decided not to try to go to the source of the Smith clan as 1. its about a 4 hour drive, on the wrong side of the road, and would take too much brain power, and 2. the town itself appears from Google street view to  be a cross road with  4 or 5 houses going off in each direction and no sign of a cemetery to look for dead relatives. I’m sure we will find something to look at.

After a 7 hour flight and being up about 24 hours we arrived and by way of train,walking and taxi got to our hotel where we immediately collapsed onto the bed for a couple hours. Then mid afternoon we were up and across the street into Hyde Park to walk around and look at stuff. The first place we came to was the rose garden. This is an area that has roses. In the middle it also had a statue.

I have no idea what the name of this statue is, I’m sure it is something meaningful. They also had benches to sit on so we did.

Some of the roses looked like this.

While we were sitting there I thought King Chuck the King of England walked by but  after thinking about it for a while I decided it wasn’t him as he didn’t do anything kingly.

From the rose garden we continued on and got to the small lake that is there and had a refreshing Coca Cola at the food place and set and just soaked up sun  and watched the swans and a duck nest that was made from twigs and trash.

We walked a bit more of the park and then headed up Piccadilly St looking for food and after walking better than a mile we ended up in a place and had an excellent, if expensive, meal of a mix of Peruvian and Chilean cuisine.

Today we got up, had breakfast and hit the underground to get to Tower hill and The Tower of London. We spent a few hours there learning how it was home of English royalty for the first 500 years of English history and then became a place where cutting off heads was apparently a family tradition. This is also where you can see the royal jewels. The nuts thing was that the line to get into this part had to be at least 2 hours long. First off I didn’t understand how King Chuck King of England had that kind of time to stand around with his “jewels” hanging out and more so why that many people wanted to see them. After touring the tower we crossed the street to a coffee place and had a refreshing coffee and a cinnamon roll to hold us while we returned to Piccadilly Circus so Mary could try to shop. While enjoying the refreshing coffee I was sure King Chuck King of England was sitting at a table nearby. After thinking about it for a while I decided it couldn’t be him because he was still across the street showing his jewels.

We are now off to find this evenings expensive meal. Tomorrow is the Magna Carta and the British Museum. If we are lucky King Chuck King of England may be there.

In a highly top secret operation Mary planned a trip to New Orleans for the weekend after my big Septuagenarian birthday. I will say that the top secret of this was on par of an operation planned by the Trump organization. The trip started from Chicago after we had spent the early part of the week in Michigan for meetings and dropping one of the China engineers at O’Hare for his trip back to China. While waiting for one of the meetings we did visit the lighthouse in St Joseph. It was windy and cold.

We got to New Orleans late afternoon and went out walking around. After a while we had some food and a delicious desert.

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We dropped into some club to watch some guy play 4 or 5 different instruments and sing.

After a quick stroll up Bourbon St. we called it a night.

The next day was a lot of walking around the French Quarter. Plenty of street musicians, that Jackson guy in Jackson park and the big river.

One of the reasons for New Orleans was to see a street jazz band that was playing a couple scheduled events on Friday and Saturday. While walking around we ran across them playing on the street on Friday afternoon. Tuba Skinny have been playing together for about 10 years.

We watched them for about a set and spent more time walking around. We got to a restaurant and I had a piece of meat and Mary had Shamu the Red Snapper.

After eating it was time for Tuba Skinny playing at an art gallery.

This is a video of them made by some other guy a couple weeks ago.

The next day was more of the same. With an early flight we were in bed early and up at 4 to head home. On the drive back from Chicago to Nashville we stopped in West Lafayette to check out the big chateau that Michael bought and got home late Sunday.

That’s right this trip hit both hemispheres and was completed by completely circumnavigating the globe. All the stops were: Nashville to Chicago to Toronto to Sao Paulo to Joinville to Sao Paulo to Rio Claro (by bus) back to Sao Paulo (by bus) to Joinville to Sao Paulo to Dubai to Hong Kong to Zhuhai (by bus across the new Hong Kong to Macau bridge) to Nanjing to Wuhu (by car) to Beijing (by high speed train) to Chicago to Nashville. 12 different airplanes, 3 buses, 2 trains, untold taxis, and 2 Ubers to get to and from the Nashville airport.

Leaving from the Sao Paulo bus station for Rio Claro I spotted this store.

I did not investigate what their go to product was.

Another elevator warning. It should be noted that the Chinese Government must have really issued an edict about elevator warnings as most places had them.

At the Dubai airport at 5:30 am local time we needed some food after the 10 hour flight from Brazil and before the 8 hour flight to Hong Kong. I had the eggs. For some unknown reason Mary ordered this.

If you are ever in the Dubai Airport I would recommend not eating as my egg and this sandwich with a couple drinks was maybe the 3rd or 4th most expensive meal we ate the entire time we were gone. Although I did get a shake from the Shake Shack a little later while waiting for our plane. Yes the Dubai airport has a Shake Shack for some reason.

Finally, if you are in Bejing in December or for that matter any time in the winter it is a government regulation that you must have a hot pot.So we did. At the hot pot place on the 3rd floor of the Beijing News Service Building. The pots were hot.