Kia Ora!

Te wiki o te reo maori - it's Maori language week. I am trying to remember to say Morena! in the mornings (not with great success) and all our meeting agendas have the topics in Maori. It's popping up all over the place, even the TV weather map has all the Maori place names, I live in Ngamotou.

Noho ora mai rā - look after yourself.

Supporting The Arts

The Arts Festival starts tomorrow and the town is getting ready. Shops are dressing up with snowflakes (it is still winter even though the days are getting longer) and the Spiegeltent is going up!

I am carrying on with my quest to do everything in my first 12 months so I have tickets to at least half a dozen things - theatre, comedy, music, dance, caberet. I'm going to 3 things in the Spiegeltent simply because it is so wonderful. It doesn't look flash in the photo but it is a tent with stained glass windows and fabulous wooden panelling and booths that travels the world as a festival venue. I know this because I went to something in it at the Melbourne festival a few years ago. Ours is going up in a carpark, a few unhappy campers but most people are really looking forward to getting inside.

Arte Kanela the Flamenco dancers at Womad are back and I'm off to see Slava & Leonard Gregorian and Paul Capsis, both Australian acts that I never managed to see there. No fancy wrist band this time but hopefully just as much fun!

Goodbye McDuff

1996 - 16.7.2009

BurgerWisconsinBurger

Sometime you just need a burger and a beer. If you are going to do it you do it right. So you go to BurgerWisconsin for the food and get yourself a locally brewed organic ale.


I have had a BurgerWinsconsin burger once before, with my fab friend Linda in Wellington and was very excited to find that they were here in New Plymouth as well. They are so fabulous because they are not your bog standard burger. Mine was beef, mushroom, blue cheese dressing and whole lettuce leaves and if you don't fancy anything on their standard menu you can build your own. Oh, and this is a petite, they also do large.


The beer is fab too. A trip to the brewery, which is about 30mins out of town is on my must do list.

Trip to Patea

Talk to anyone round here and they will tell you the most significant thing about Patea is the freezing works. We actually went to talk to the museum staff about education programmes. We didn't get to actually see the museum because it is currently a building site but the plans look great and I'm definitely planning a trip back to visit after it's opened early next year.



I've driven through Patea on my way to Wellington and notice the Waka memorial. I didn't stop that time but today I got a photo. It is in honour of the canoe called Aotea that landed in South Taranaki and is the beginning of the Iwi (tribes) in that area.




On our way back we stopped for lunch just outside Hawera at the cafe near the Fonterra factory. Fonterra is the big dairy company so it should be no suprise that there is a big cow out the front and inside the tables are on a rotary milking platform - a tiny version of a rotating restaurant. There are non moving tables if you suffer from motion issues.


I have also added a trip to Eltham to my list of things to do - cheese factory and retro shopping, both fabulous on reliable information.

Remotes

TV, DVD, Video and Sky

Yup, I've finally given in, having resisted all the time I was in Melbourne and signed up for Sky so I can watch the rugby. As a bonus I now get 50 channels including Food (the Cook & the Chef, Yeah!), UK-TV and Prime (Top Gear, double Yeah!!). I fully realise that I may still end up with nothing to watch but monster truck racing and home video shows at some point but that's why I keep a book on hand at all times.

Cloudy

Today I went to Stratford and realised that I've only shown you photos of the mountain at it's clear, sparkly best. Not all days are like that so here are a couple of cloudy shots.

Still looks pretty spectacular, yes?