Author: bbpeck

I flew from Chicago O’Hare to London Gatwick to start my return to Bob and house sitting/traveling for a few weeks. From Gatwick, I took a Thameslink train to the large and lovely Saint Pancras train station from which I would catch an East Midlands train to Derby to reconnect with Bob. I had some time in the Saint Pancras station to grab a coffee and nibble and have a look around before my connection.

Bob met me at the Derby station. I arrived about 4:30 pm, and we walked to our Derby house sit home. It was in a nice, quiet neighborhood and Bob had done a great job of tending the house and the cat, Nero. We had a day together in Derby before we did the final cleaning and said our good-byes.

Bob and I had spent a couple of days in Derby on a prior trip, so it was fun to see it again. The city has a population of about 250,000 and includes a university.

When we were planning our time between our UK house sits, Bob had found a library fairly close to Derby that you could stay at. It only had one night available, but we decided to do it. It is the library of William Gladstone, four-time Prime Minister of the UK. He was also an avid book collector and created a library to allow public access to his collection at the end of his life. The library continues to collect books and make them available through reading rooms as well as offer about 20 hotel rooms, a dining room, and educational courses for the public. There was a Latin course going on while we were there. The library is in the cute village of Hawarden just across the English border in Wales. We had a quick tour of the library as well as the little community while we were there.

On Friday once we had spoken with an airline representative and learned that our luggage was on its way to a Berlin, we headed out for some more explorations, especially along the lovely canal (River Spee) that runs through Berlin.

With the exception of Museum Island, which was almost completely under construction, we had a great day out.

We arrived in Berlin on a Wednesday late afternoon and had an easy trip into our hotel via bus (trip was even easier with no luggage to worry about). We stayed at a great hotel/hostel near the zoo so a bit outside the city center (Berlin Mitte). We enjoyed both the area, very active but safe and the hotel (We had a private room.) It allowed for good walks, was a nice hopping area, and the staff were super friendly and supportive as we awaited luggage delivery.

Before arriving in Germany, we had reserved a time to visit the dome atop the Reichstag (Germany’s capitol building). Our walk there took us through a lovely park.

The Dome Tour was self-guided with headphones that started automatically when you began ascending the dome and as you reached specific points on the way up and down. It mostly discussed the buildings you were seeing but also the construction of the dome, the fact that it’s open at the top, and how rain and snow are diverted when they come in so that people in the plenary chambers below the dome don’t get wet.

After the Dome Tour, we had a picnic near the Brandenburg Gate before doing a “free” walking tour that we had also reserved. We’re not normally group tour people, but Berlin has such an interesting history and we had such a short time there that we wanted to learn as much as possible. The tour was great. It was led by a former history teacher, and we got to visit sites you wouldn’t normally find (like the bunker where Hitler killed himself at the end of the war) as Germany doesn’t want Neo Nazis making a shrine out of anything tied to the Nazi government. All but one Nazi governmental building have been razed, and the aforementioned bunker is quite a few feet under a non-descript parking lot with no signage. it was also cool to see the remaining sections of the wall and the stones in the street marking where the rest of the wall stood.

Beautiful Berlin Opera House

One of my favorite stops was Gendarmenmarkt Square. The Square itself represents the multi-culturalism and progressiveness of Germany prior to 1900 symbolized by the buildings that surround the square — a university and two identical churches. One Church is the German Church and the other is the French Church. The fact that they are mirrors of each other indicating that immigrants were no less important to the state of Germany than their native-born citizens. Unfortunately it also was the site of Nazi book burning and proves a cautionary tale that if the Holocaust could happen here it can happen anywhere.

This quote is by Heinrich Heine and was written about the Spanish Inquisition but certainly fits the Holocaust.

After the tour we rested for a bit at the vibrant Sony Center, a mix of restaurants and retail.

Bob found another lookout that he thought we could do, so that became our game plan for Sunday. This route took us to the top of one of the mountains that we could see from the window of our Airbnb unit. After some work on the computer in the morning, we headed to Tantalus Lookout – Puu Ualakaa State Park.

Our route took us over the canal and then back through neighborhoods before cutting through a great school property where a water polo invitational was in progress.

Our route started in the Makiki Forest Recreation Area where we went up and up and up again (no zig zagging here) over a very rooty path before veering right into the Puu Ualakaa State Park. Google Maps said it should take us an hour and 45 minutes to get from our place to the top. It took just over 2 hours. This was a watch your footing, pause frequently hike.

This was so worth it!! Some of the best views we’ve ever seen and what a great look at Diamond Head. Many others were there to take in the view, but they drove up. Probably smarter. Much quieter though than Diamond Head.

As we started back through the lookout area to hit the trail, we saw chickens. Not sure why, but we have seen quite a few wild chickens while we’ve been here.

Aloha!

That’s it for our Hawaiian adventure as Monday was spent doing laundry, cleaning our unit, writing posts, and transferring our cell phone service from AT&T to Google Fi. That took a little effort, but the most stressful part was waiting to ensure the new SIM cards would arrive before our flight out.

The one thing we knew we would do while in Hawaii is climb Diamond Head, mostly because we’d heard about it and it was in walking distance from where we were staying. So, Saturday morning we left about 10ish to walk the 2.8 miles to the park starting along the canal by our building.

Diamond Head is a crater. You walk into the crater through a shared pedestrian/car tunnel before paying the entrance fee and heading to the top.

You do not come to Diamond Head and expect to be alone and definitely not on a Saturday. It’s a destination here, so we joined the multitudes and paid our $1 entrance fee ($5 per car — amazing!) to start our upwards journey. The path is easy to follow and zig zaggy until the very top where you do some vertical stair climbing. There is also a longish tunnel to walk through near the end (FYI – if you’re claustrophobic) and then a small space to scoot through to get to the observation deck if you veer right and not left at the decision point at the top. This is not indicated on the sign that says you can go either way.

After we left Diamond Head, we started back down the road the way we came to see if a market we had passed on the way to the park was still open. It was not, but we stumbled on a great cactus garden on a community college campus. It reminded us of our times in Tucson.

Okay, back to more typical Hawaii destinations. After a stop for a great, fresh smoothie, we were off to the Iolani Palace to at least get a look at the US’s only royal residence. We saw a number of other cool buildings along the way.

The Iolani Palace was the residence of the royal rulers of Hawaii from 1845 to 1893. It’s located in the capital district along with other government office buildings. We found this to be an attractive area.

When we were in Auckland, the paper had recommended a bar in Waikiki in their travel section, so we had to give it a look. It is called The Study, and it’s located in The Modern Hotel. It is too cute. It is behind a bookcase during the hours when it’s closed. It opens at 6 pm, with the bookcase rotating out far enough for people to walk through. We went early to see it open.

Aloha! Bob and I arrived in Honolulu at @ 11 am Friday morning prior to our midnight departure from Auckland. Time traveling is better when you gain time! The weather forecast was for rain for our entire stay (late Friday morning through Monday night) due to a couple of tropical storms, but they have been good and died out except for some impact on surf.

Many moons ago when we planned to head to Hawaii after NZ, we thought we’d be in Hawaii longer and planned to see more of the islands. However, when a house sit in Germany opened up, we jumped at the chance, so have settled for an exploration of Waikiki with the short stay.

Our initial impression of Hawaii began before we even departed on our Hawaiian Islands flight from NZ when every pre-board announcement was followed by “mahalo.” This is Hawaiian for thank you, but they said it so often that we began to think it meant period, a verbal cue for us to understand they were done with their statement. It continued on board. It does beat getting sworn at.

Our next impression of Hawaii came at the airport where we could have watched a short feature film before our luggage arrived. Some poor girl traveling from overseas was frantically trying to find someone to talk to as she was going to miss her next flight. The Honolulu Airport is old and very small. We walked outside to get to Immigrations and after you pick up your luggage, you are almost immediately outdoors. The airport has been rated as one of the worst in the nation by the J.D. Power Annual North American Airport study. Of course, no one comes to Hawaii to visit the airport, and as we did get our luggage, no harm no foul.

We are not beach people, so our stay will tell you almost nothing as to whether you should visit (though I’m always of the opinion that it’s good to see and explore new places), but we have enjoyed our visit and the found the food to be much more affordable than we had expected.

We had to do a stroll near the beach beginning near the resorts before hitting the more public areas.

Many of the buildings in Waikiki seem older — built maybe in the 60s or 70s, but there are also some newer buildings, especially shopping centers for those needing to take a break from the beach.

If you’ve made it this far, mahalo.

Bob and I returned to Auckland last Friday afternoon July 27th and spent much of our last week prepping to leave Auckland. However, we did see two movies as part of the New Zealand Film Festival, and we would recommend both. We saw “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” which is a good but depressing documentary film about the power of money in our Democracy and the inability for money to buy true friendships. Roy was a powerful attorney starting with the McCarthy era and with close ties to the current president. The second film was Who You Think I Am, a French film starring Juliette Binoche. She is as beautiful and talented as ever and the plot has a number of twists and turns through to the very final scene.

We also had a final outing. This time we took the ferry to Birkenhead, another area across the harbor from Auckland, but further west than Devonport, for a nice walk about — with both of us bootless. My foot felt great (got the official thumbs up Tuesday with x-rays to show the fracture healing).

While the town center of Devonport is pretty much right at the harbor, we had to do a quick hike steeply uphill to get to the center of Birkenhead.

We didn’t have a map of Birkenhead like we had for Devonport, but the public library was able to help us out.

Inside of the library

One of the things that we knew we wanted to do was to walk through the Le Roy’s Bush Reserve that we’d read about. It is a walk through a rain forest setting along a stream and by a waterfall. Naturally, it (a boardwalk) within the park was being rebuilt, so we were only able to walk through a small portion. However, with the aid of maps from the library, we found other areas of Birkenhead to explore.

We walked to the War Memorial Park where the memorial is behind glass and the park focuses on sports activities

From the park we walked down to Kendall Bay for a wet, and sometimes muddy walk through Kauri Point Centennial Park and Chelsea Heritage Park, by the Chelsea Sugar Factory and then back to the wharf to catch the ferry back to Auckland.

We spent Thursday mostly exploring the area north of Paihia (misspelled throughout last post, darn it), but we started with a quick photo of the main building at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. This is an important historical site for New Zealand where you could easily spend a few hours seeing the spot where the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document, was signed on February 6, 1840, between representatives of the British Crown and Maori chiefs. The grounds offer access to a museum, the historic treaty house, a Maori meeting house, ceremonial war canoe, and cultural performances. We had planned to visit but decided the cost (US$34 each) and time (3-4 hours) needed to explore was more than we wanted to commit on our quick holiday.

Instead, we went waterfall hunting in and around Kerikeri, northeast of Paihia. First up was Haruru Falls. We had some unexpected greeters when we arrived.

Haruru Falls was in Waitangi not far from the Treaty Grounds. We drove up to Kerikeri for the next three waterfalls. Each of the falls that we visited in Kerikeri was in residential areas which seemed so odd to us — that some people could hear these everyday from their homes.

We then drove into the town center to walk to the next to falls. The 2.5 km path started on public land directly behind peoples’ homes before going into the bush near the creek/stream.

The second waterfall along the track was just a bit farther on. I missed the sign for it, but luckily Bob saw it or we would have continued down the stream and out of town.

Kerikeri has two other waterfalls that we didn’t get to, as we wanted to poke around the town a bit. One of their highlights is the Interweaving of Cultures sculpture by New Zealand artist Chris Booth in the Kerikeri Domain. We also walked out to the Fairy Pools by the Kerikeri River for a picnic lunch.

Kerikeri also has a chocolate factory with an associated cafe (everything has a cafe here — even garden centers) as well as some wineries. We checked out the chocolate factory and one winery (at which our second small world moment of the trip — both at wineries, but before we had anything to drink so I’ve got my facts straight).

We stopped at the Marsden Estate Winery to do a tasting. As we were talking with the hostess, she mentioned that another couple from Texas were visiting and were having lunch. (Note: When asked, we still say we’re from Texas cuz Austin still feels like home, and our address is in Texas.). At this point, a guy came up to buy some wine, and she motioned to us and told him that we were from Texas. He asked where, and we said Austin, and yep, that’s where he and his wife live too. He has family in the area and he and his wife, who happen to produce Austin Women’s Magazine, were over to celebrate his wife’s birthday. We had a great chat about Austin and travels. Small, small world!

Two final comments, both of the wineries let us split a glass of wine but kindly poured it into 2 glasses.

We ran into the Austin couple again when we returned to Paihia. They had just stocked up for what looked to be a festive birthday celebration with family, and we were going into the grocery store to pick up dinner for the night.

On Wednesday morning, we left Matakana and headed for Pahia and the Bay of Islands. We took the coastal route and stopped first at Mangawhai Heads. It was another glimpse of the beautiful east coast north of Auckland. We walked down to the shore from the parking lot and then up a small hill for another view. There is a coastal walk in the area, but it’s good we didn’t plan to do that with my one booted foot as a local that chatted with me said that there was some rock scrambling in parts of the path. He also mentioned, after I commented on the surf, that it is much rougher on the west coast and even skilled swimmers can get pulled out by riptides. He started but didn’t finish a story about his cousin having to get rescued, so we were left wondering whether he was saved or not.

We continued driving along the coast for a bit and stopped a couple of times for more coastal pics. At one of our stops, a nice local, who had been following us in her car, let us know that our gas cap was off.

We arrived to our hotel in Pahia just before 2 pm. The check-in process was easy (though maybe too easy as staff didn’t take Bob’s id out of the copier and apparently didn’t need to copy anyone else’s as neither they nor Bob caught it until we went to leave Friday morning). We were focused on walking back into the harbor in the center of town to catch a ferry over to Russell just across the bay.

To get to Russell, we would cross a small portion of the Bay of Islands. The bay contains 144 islands as well as numerous peninsulas and inlets. After purchasing our tickets, we hopped aboard the Happy Ferry (yep, that was the name) and giddily set sail with two other passengers for the 10-15 minute ride.

Russell itself was pretty quiet on a Wednesday afternoon. A lot of businesses had signs that they would reopen Thursday. We weren’t sure if that was normal winter hours or in conjunction with the end of school holidays. We still had a good walk about.

Tuesday started much like Monday with a drive and some short hikes in a great park. This time we headed east of Matakana to the Tawharanui Regional Park on the Tawharanui Peninsula. They were mowing as we drove in. It is a 588 hectare park (1,450 square acres) that aims to provide an open sanctuary free from plant and animal pests where native birds and animals can thrive.

We tried not to be too much of human pests while we were there. The native Kauri tree has been struck with a die-back disease, so we had to clean our shoes when we entered one part of the track to keep from bringing contaminants in.

After natural beauty, we returned to Brick Bay Winery for man-made beauty with their 65 piece Sculpture Trail. I have just picked a few photos, but the highlight for Bob was getting 5 new big head photos which he posted on his Instagram.

Our only comment on the trail, and we have this thought in art museums sometimes as well, we read the descriptions provided with the pieces, but they are often so ostentatiously worded that by the time you’ve deciphered what they are endeavoring to say, you’re too tired to want to go on. (a bit like that last sentence but more so). We finally quit reading and made up our own stories.

From Brick’s Bay, we headed to Warkworth a town of about 5,000 northeast of the winery and southeast of Matakana. We just walked the main streets to get a sense of the town.

The only other Matakana Wine Trail winery open during the winter is Heron’s Flight which was on the road back to Matakana. They closed at 5, and we got there about 4. We were the only guests. The cellar door seemed to be a mom-and-pop run place (mostly mom). We had an interesting chat (mostly about accounting) with the host and two quick tastings before they left to run some errands. They were out of the drive before we were.