This weekend’s Newmarket Italian Festival was significantly impacted by wind and rain. So, I didn’t investigate the food stalls and so on. 

But, on the way home from the pool I did make a quick detour to the Lumsden Green to see who came out from the Italian motorcycle club and the Ferrari Owners Club. A few diehards braved the rain and showed off their babies. 

This 1971 Dino 246 did 0-100kph in 7.3 seconds… not the fastest Ferrari, but still a lot of car in the day. The fastest 2018 Camry reports 5.5 seconds. Much of what I still don’t know about myself after 52 years boils down to how I feel about those two facts and other sets of facts just like them. 

The other attraction was the local Roman Legion re-enactor group… doesn’t every town have one now? There were 8 or 10 of them sloshing around in their homemade costumes, but I didn’t get a pic before they headed off to conquer Gaul or something like that. 

This hanging crystal and I arrived in Lee’s life at the very same birthday/housewarming party. Now, over 30 years later, it’s hanging in its 10th sunny window. I’m so grateful that we are still enjoying its tiny rainbows together!!

This is a memorial to the Auckland Regiment, on the edge of the cricket playing area in the middle of the Auckland Domain. 

On the back of the memorial, with Auckland Hospital in the background, there’s a lovely quote from Ataturk about how all the dead boys buried at Gallipoli are the same, whether Johnny or Mehmet. 

The “mountain fountain” sits outside the Holy Trinity Cathedral at the top of our street. 

It was cool to get a peek inside the other day while maintenance was underway. 

As part of my birthday week, we went up in the Sky Tower. Our dinner plans were foiled by their stupid online reservation system, but it was a nice consolation prize to do the 53rd-level observation tower thing. 

Home, work, and most of our daily / weekly routine is somewhere in this next shot… 

Here’s an assortment of pictures from the past couple of weeks that follow up on previous posts. With New Zealand being an almost entirely cashless society, my opportunities to find money in the street have gone down dramatically. In fact, I haven’t found a single penny since arriving here, although Lee found a $5 bill the other morning. Still, there are plenty of things to keep an eye out for as I walk around… 

Dead umbrellas:

A cute little car… actually a Daihatsu Copen, which turns out to be a Kei-car:

And another utility box: