Moving South...

Left Auckland on Saturday morning, having had a splendid time and discovering the perfect bar - I'd heard of it as it was dubbed as doing 'the best gin & tonic in the city' and not only was this not a lie, but it was accompanied by an Edward Hopper'esque interior, cool music (zero 7, est, portishead, pat metheny, royksopp, etc), cute barmen, and prime position on crossroads for people watching - hurrah!

Had epic comedy of errors journey from Auckland to Wellington on the Tranzscenic train....we managed to be an hour behind schedule before we even left, due to the engine not having arrived from a nearby station...speed restriction were then enforced around 2 hours into our journey due to the heat, and then the engine decided to break down at the bottom of a mountain in the middle of nowhere - we were given the optimistic update that the engineer had located the problem but wasn't entirely sure he could fix it...20 mins later he managed and we were off again, arriving in Wellington a mere 2 hours behind schedule...

Now in England I'm sure this would all have elicited a stream of complaining, demands for refund, and genereal disgruntlement from all concerned...here on the other hand, there was not even a thought of a complaint form, everyone found it wildly amusing, was happily placated with a free cup of coffee and there was much laughter throughout....splendid! Oh, and the scenery was quite nice too!

I then spent the Waitangi weekend in Wellington with the winchursts before heading down to Kaikoura today (Thursday), where I've spent a very splendid afternoon on the beach, and am just about to go and devour lots of seafood!