Mission Bay, Baby

As some of you know and as was hinted at in the last post, Amanda and I have had to move again. Our housemates, since May, have decided to move to Nice, France and so we needed to find a new place to live. They originally thought they would be leaving for France the first week of the new year and so we had approx 6 weeks to find somewhere else. A little daunting given how long it had taken us to find them and how little was on the market in our budget and more importantly somewhere we wanted to live! One reason for moving to NZ was to spend more time outdoors and ideally, in order to be "living the dream" we wanted a place near the beach.

Amanda's shifts were not kind so I was charged with viewing potential flats. Thankfully I only had to view two. The first seemed very nice, the second awful. Along with everyone else at the viewing I entered an application to rent the first flat. We then had to wait what seemed like forever for a response - but was in fact only 3 days.

Lady luck, she must have been smiling on us - we beat the competition and were soon signing a 12 month lease on our first place together - be that the UK or NZ. A couple of days later and Amanda could view the flat for the first time!

I had to make a snap judgement on the flat and now that we have been living here a couple of weeks, I think I did pretty well. Apparently Amanda trusts my decisions now!

View of Rangitoto from the end of our street

Palm lined front of our block

View our of our Kitchen - sea view possible with the right angle

The only concerns at the time were, one, it's a flat - would it be noisy? And two, the kitchen. It's tiny - but a perfect excuse to improve our Mise en place.

Thankfully, while a little noisier than our last abode, it has proved pretty quiet despite being a block of flats and despite being one road back from the busy village centre. The building itself is afforded a slight Mediterranean feel by it's orange tiled roofs.

The previous tenants (Kiwis who had moved there from Brighton!) had been there for 2 years and it was completely refurbished just before they move in - we have a bathroom that would make Faye Kidd proud; and a load of new white goods. It's on the first (top) floor and we have a gas cooker again (yeay!).

We've managed to furnish it by making some pretty sweet purchases on TradeMe, the pick of which must be our solid wood dining table. The chairs, brought separately need a little love but that is going to be a little side project...

The flat lets in loads of light, but not direct sunlight so it's bright, yet cool. Best of all however, is the location. We are set just one road back from the seafront and so the flat is filled with fresh sea air :0)

The beach itself is just a 90 seconds walk away; and that would be less if there was not a road to cross.

Mission Bay is a little like Brighton in some respects. It's a lively place and sometimes it can seem like half of Auckland is visiting. That said, even then, it's still nowhere near as busy as Brighton on a sunny day.There's loads of cafe's, bar's and restaurants on the strip and even a cinema.

The beach, sandy of course, with great views of Rangitoto and the city, is backed by lawns shaded by Pohutukawa and fir trees. It's great for swimming and we can also hire paddleboards, windsurfers etc.

Finally, it's an easy 8km cycle to work along the seafront - although it can a be a little harder when the wind gets up!

OMG We've been here one year already!

Wow, that year went fast! No way does it feel like 12 months have passed since we boarded the plane at Heathrow Airport last year. With the (lame) Sky Tower fireworks ushering in 2013 we have now been in New Zealand for 1 year and 4 days!

What a year it has been too. With our latest move (look out for a future blog post) to Mission Bay, we have now "lived" in 5 places since we arrived; while we've also "owned" three cars. Both myself and Amanda have rejoined the rat-race and found gainful employment and of course in November we were both granted Residency.

More importantly however, despite the rather paltry 20 days annual leave that is standard in New Zealand, we have still managed to get out and see quite a lot of the North Island - still a lot to explore however.

With Amanda's job been a little stressful to say the least I think she often loses sight of how much we have done. Last time she complained we were not exploring enough I knocked up this video - it only covers the first 3 months!

Lookout at Opito Bay - Bay of Islands from Rich & Amanda on Vimeo.

Enter The Fatman

We left the UK on Boxing Day 2011 so our year has been bookended by two Christmas's. We had only been our new place a week so our decorations definitely took the more is less approach, but then that's our style anyway - check out the world's smallest Christmas trees!

As it happens our first NZ Christmas ended up being an "Orphans" Christmas with our ex-housemate's and their friends and their daughter. In typical NZ style a barbecue was involved as we enjoyed a Christmas Brunch that lasted pretty much all day.

Just as well as there was a lot of food... A leg of ham, barbecued lamb, sausage, bacon, avo and eggs, Croissaints, Christmas cake, Pavlova, mince pies, coffee and of course Champagne. I think there may have been some veggies involved too.

Jemma and Aaron had done a stand up job with the decorations, even decorating the dog's kennel. We even got presents; one of which I managed to set light to - oops!

A great day finished off with a couple of hilarious games of Cranium. A real shame that Aaron and Jemma are soon to leave NZ to start a new life in Nice, France. We are going to miss them. Stanford the dog and Lilly the cat will also be missed (Never thought I'd miss a cat!) I guess we cannot complain too much though! ;0)

A weekend with the rels

A couple of days after Xmas we drove 3 hours south to a valley south of Rotorua to spend the weekend with Amanda's cousin's Tony and Frances. Frances's brother George and mother Shirley were also in residence and we were joined from the Hutt Valley by her sister Liz and hubby Pete, with whom we had stayed earlier in the year.

George reprised his role as a tour guide and took us to the nearby Orakei Korako thermal park which you can only access via a short ferry ride. Interesting place but not as spectacular as Waiotapu which we visited during our visit to Rotorua in June.

Later that day, Tony took us out on his 60 year old wooden fishing boat. He inherited it from his mother and has done a wonderful job restoring it and fitting a few mod cons. We spend a good hour crusing the 12km length of the nearby lake Ohakuri. As it happens arriving at the banks of the thermal area we visted earlier in the day with George. Amanda even took the helm for a bit - eeek!

Frances and Tony have a lovely life style block (approx 2 acres) with great views of lake Ohakuri and the mountains beyond. Had a huge barbecue and plenty of wine to finish off the day. Frances also presented Amanda with a pile of postcards and letters that her Mum had sent to Frances and family over the years. I think it brought back a lot of good memories for everyone.

Next day, despite the rain George and I hit the amazing mountain bike trails in Whakarewarewa just South of Rotorua. Wow, awesome trails through stunning Redwood forest with native bush intermingled. We completed a few grade 2's and then a couple of grade 3's. Must say I was most impressed with George's 'give it a go' attitude. The trails were quite a bit removed from his usual leisurely cycles. I hope I am the same when I myself are more advanced in years!

Another great weekend visiting Amanda's rel's who were yet again superb hosts.

NYE

We decided to have a quiet New Year's Eve as were both exhausted. Enjoyed a quiet night in with mince pies and red wine before heading out to the beach to watch the fireworks off the Sky Tower - along with a lot of Auckland. Following the fireworks there was an impressive traffic jam along Tamaki Drive that lasted quite some time.

The fireworks, were, like last year, pretty lame with an pretty insipid 5 minute display. Auckland council could do with watching a few videos of Sydney's show! Or London, this years display may even have given Syndey's show a run for it's money. Although, that said, perhaps it's a good thing that our tax dollars are not going up in smoke...

New Year's Day

One advantage of having a quiet NYE of course is that you do not spend the next day with a stonking hangover. As such we were able to start 2013 the way we hope it will continue.

Headed to the already busy beach in the morning and hired some paddleboards. Amanda had planned to get a kayak but they were all out. One hour later and she could call herself a Stand Up Paddleboarder. Great conditions, but getting rather hot, so cooled of after with a quick swim.Even managed to fit in my good deed for the day by rescuing a beach ball for a little girl. It was well on it's way out to sea so proved quite a challenge - but her squeal of delight when reunited with it made it worth it.

A quick shower at home (tis only 90 seconds away after all!) and then hit our fave local cafe for lunch (courgette & mint fritters since you ask) and an allpress coffee.

The beach was really heaving now (though still nothing on a busy day at Brighton) and we spent the afternoon reading in the welcome shade of a Pohutukawa tree (the real NZ Christmas tree which hits full bloom at this time of year).

With the sun a little lower we took a walk along the coast to the next village center were we finsihed off a great day with an authentic gelato.

What a great start to 2013 - and with steak and mince pies waiting at home our first day of the year is going to end pretty swell too... :0)

Food for thought

Finally, I thought I would leave you with this to start the new year with. It was posted by a friend on Facebook and I think it deserves sharing...