I was remiss in my post from our 3 hour tour. Tom and Jillian give their guests a thank you gift. I have no words. What a lovely thought and gift. How could they know I sometimes appropriate coasters from bars and restaurants?
We had a scheduled DONSA today and it was a rain day. Gammy slept in. We have kept her busy the last few days. I believe she will be posting another Gammy musings shortly.
After breakfast and before we left the hotel, we had a little visit with Q. The joys of modern technology.
Dotty, Jim, and I went back to Te Papa today. Along the way, we were able to take more pictures of street art and the damage from the earthquake that hit in 2016 and some of the buildings have not been rebuilt. When we walked into Te Papa, we told one of the red shirts that we had been on tour with Phil (why does it remind me of ‘Somebody feed Phil’ everytime?) and they told us to carry on. I made mention of that to a young lady up near the ticket desk and she told us Phil was kind of famous and if he told us to come back that was fine with everyone else.
Our first stop was the exhibit Gallipoli where the Aussies and New Zealanders had fought in Turkey in WWII. The Māori also had come along to help out after they had been approved of being their own battalion and deployed. This was a very moving experience. There were Bigger than Lifesize sculptures of some of the main players in this theater of operations. We think the Wētā people created these sculptures for this exhibit. They were so lifelike to the sweat on the forehead to the hairs on the arm. At the end of the exhibit you can take a poppy, create your own poppy, write a soldier’s name on it and leave it at the foot of a soldier. I took a made poppy, took a paper poppy and wrote Major Doug Sloan’s name on it and placed it at the foot of the soldier. Doug was with 1-32 with Jim and he was KIA on October 31, 2006. Upon leaving the exhibit, I sprinkled myself in the Māorī tradition.
We then went to see the large squid and other exhibits we had not seen when touring with Phil.
Dotty needed to go by a yarn shop to look for more yarn with possum fur. Possum fur is very soft and possum in New Zealand are not like possum in North America. It is easier to get the possum fur off a fresh dead possum. At least that is what we were told, that it peels right off fresh road kill. Someone may have mentioned that if you hit 10 possums you could get New Zealand citizenship.
Jim pulled up the heritage trail that we were using in Aukland and read about the engineering of the Te Papa museum. It has 152 earthquake stabilizers put underneath the museum. We then followed the wharf and around the library and children’s playground (we found a lighthouse), before making it to the yarn shop.
The below photos just represent some of what we saw on our walk.
We made it back to the hotel in time for a sandwich and naptime. I worked on some of my past blogs to try and get caught up.
And suddenly it was dinner time. There was a permanent food truck down by the grocery store that served hamburgers, so we all trekked down there, left a sticker, and ordered takeaway. Back to our room for dinner and Rummikub.
