Auckland

Arrived in Auckland on Friday. Staying in the very pleasant, respectable, leafy suburb of Grey Lynn in a house that is delightfully bohemian and cluttered... books everywhere; rugs on the walls; a large wooden dolls house taking up half the hall; and a rapturous welcome from a slightly over-weight fox terrier...

The city itself is a bit soulless tho - pretty much like modern cities everywhere, the combination of old and new architecture not always sitting harmoniously side by side... It's all VERY hilly (San Francisco springs to mind), with houses being built on slopes that would make a UK buildings inspector blanch! But of course here most of the houses are wooden, so are just on stilts. If they want an extra floor on the house, they simply jack up the old (generally single-storey) structure and slot a few more rooms underneath - and sometimes the people carry on living in the house while this is going on! There's a lot to be said for timber-framed buildings!!!

Today (Monday) I'm headed off north again...