Wellington Botanical Gardens, New Zealand

For our summer holidays we spent three weeks in New Zealand, I divided up the weeks between the North and South Islands. Our last stop on the North Island was in the capital Wellington. As with much cities there is lots to do and see, one of which was taking the funicular up for a lovely view.

It leaves from downtown Lambton Quay and you arrive in the suburbs of Kelburn in only 5 mins. We took in the views of the city and surrounding area and went on to visit the Cable Car Museum. It is free entry and very small so worth a look since you are up there anyway.

Afterwards we walked back down through the botanical gardens, which was a very pleasant walk. Obviously it depends on what the season is and as it was winter when we were there, there was not so many flowers. There were ponds, a Treehouse information centre, playground and rose garden.

Once we left the gardens we made our way back in the city centre and got a bit lost too, but we arrived sound and safe.

Alessio has been away this week on a cruise, which he enjoyed but would not go on another one though. Next week we are going to Barcelona and we will go to see another match of FC Barcelona. This time they will play against Sevilla.

Hope you are all having a great weekend

Isle of Harris - Tweed

Our trip to the Outer Hebrides took place in summer 2017 and we visited most of the big islands. While we were on the Isle of Harris we went to see this exhibition about Harris Tweed.

The making of Harris Tweed is all done in the Outer Hebrides, in fact there statutory Act of Parliament that says the weaving of Harris Tweed must be done in the homes of the islanders. If you want to know more about the whole process here is a link!

The fabrics we saw were amazing, I liked the chair and all the clothes are just spectacular too! I bought a small purse and my father bought a bunnit or bonnet (a flat cap)

The location of the place was fantastic, when we were there it was quite peaceful. Back in Tarbert the main town we went to a shop selling Harris tweed and Alessio got a bonnet too! I also bought a lovely purple/light blue cushion in another part of the island too.

In Tarbert we also visited another big tourist hit Isle of Harris distillery. We couldn`t get tour of the place as all the tours were booked out, but we did eat at their restaurant and bought two bottles of the gin! It is in a beautiful bottle, which I have kept! You can see it here

Both places a well worth a visit if you are in the area!

Hope you are all having a great weekend!

Easter Weekend in Bucharest, Romania Part 2

Easter weekend was spent in Bucharest, Romania and as I mentioned in the first post the capital is not a colourful city! The colourful bits are the street art/graffiti, parks and the walls, windows in the the many churches.

The second photo is the Palace of the Parliament, we only saw it from the front, but looking at pictures of the whole building it is huge, colossal, gigantic, massive and any other adjective you can think of to describe big!  I actually now regret not visiting inside looks quite amazing! It is the second largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon, it has 20 floors and 8 of them are underground!

Don`t be put of Romania if you think the whole country is like Bucharest as it is not! We had a quick trip to Brasov, lovely city/town and there is also Sighisoara which looks fantastic to visit and also Timisoara. Check out this link and you may be wanting to visit this country!

It is the weekend and I have plans to see some friends, go to the movies and also if you are interested in architecture there is an Open House Zürich. There are opportunities to visit different buildings, houses and museums for free!

Have a great weekend!

July Reading List

My reading from July is very low as I was in New Zealand from mid July onwards and didn't´ want to take many books with me. It did not stop me buying books there and bringing more back than I took out. This photo is from my shelf and just some of the many books I still have to read.

In no particular order:

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Borkmann`s Point by Hakar Nesser

New Uses for Old Boyfriends by Beth Kendrick

Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave


The first book is the second is a trilogy and funnily enough I am reading the final book at the moment. The last book on the list was bought in NZ and I purposely looked for NZ writers. He has written many books and I did like this one.

Hope you all had a great weekend, I have spent it reading.

A Day and Night in Oamaru, South Island

From Dunedin we decided to go to Christchurch by bus which was roughly 5 hours away to break this journey up I decided to make a stop in Oamaru. I did not know much about this place but thought it would have enough to offer for our short time there. It did not disappoint at all.

The biggest pull to Oamaru is the chance to see the smallest penguins in the world, the blue penguins. So I booked tickets for that evening, we had a short wonder around the town and headed to the penguin centre.

We had to wait until it got dark but we had some fur seals to keep us occupied, they were just lounging around. The little critters started coming after 6pm and they just waddled their way up from the sea into the grounds where their homes are, which looked like small boxes. It was well worth the wait, even though it was freezing cold by then.

The other rather interesting thing about Oamaru is the Victorian architecture it has to offer, lots of lovely cafes and craft shops. There is also a Steampunk headquarters and you may well ask what the heck is that. I had no idea until I read up about it. "Steampunk is a quirky and fun genre of science fiction which features steam powered technologies" this is from the website about steampunk. We did see some examples and if we had had enough time probably would have visited the place.

So that was our short stop in Oamaru and we stayed in a nice flat and would recommend it. The lady picked us up from the bus stop and brought us to the flat.

Happy Weekend