A Fond Farewell

With heavy hearts we said farewell to our visitors for the past week. They were outstanding guests and we showed them as much as we could without making them brain dead! It’s a *very* long flight so we wanted to make the trip worthwhile. During the week we visited Cathedral Square in the Central Business District, went to a Kiwi house and aquarium, road the tram, got chilled at the International Antarctic Centre, flew to Queenstown (see a separate blog about that: "The Girls Do Queenstown"), played at the beach, watched a light show on the New Brighton Pier, experimented with lots of cool NZ playground equipment, spent the day at a real NZ primary school, celebrated William’s birthday at the QEII waterpark, and ate way too much at our favourite local restaurants. Margaret took the first 4 days of the week off to keep Caroline company and on Friday they attended school together. They were very cute in their matching Beckenham uniforms.

They tried crumpets, kiwi, pavlova, pikelets, whitebait, beets, hokey pokey, and wheat bix. They experienced the Rocktopus, the Supernova, Luging, Flying Foxes, Poi dancing, the Maori Haka, Little Blue Penguins, riding in Haglund Vehicles (tank-like transporters used in Antarctica), tramping, and ... so much more.

We’ll be enjoying the much appreciated gifts they brought (See’s candy, Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix, taco seasoning, microwave popcorn,...) along with the more than 450 pictures taken, and remembering their wonderful visit for a long time.