{"id":12108,"date":"2012-03-04T06:30:39","date_gmt":"2012-03-03T17:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=12108"},"modified":"2012-03-03T20:41:21","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T07:41:21","slug":"my-excellent-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/03\/04\/my-excellent-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"My Excellent Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hector's dolphins, Akaroa<\/p><\/div>\n

So finally, after tweeting about this several times, here is the post on my excellent adventure—which basically involved having a visitor (always good) and using that as the spur to actually have a holiday.<\/p>\n

Basically, I haven’t had a real holiday for quite some time—they’re always ‘busman’s holidays” where I’m doing something for the book or have an event, and even with family and friends, events are not exactly restful as we all know!<\/p>\n

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The Giant's House, Akaroa<\/p><\/div>\n

And because the spur for the holiday was entertaining\u00a0 a visitor, I did all those things that you do when you’re visiting a place, but so often don’t when you’re local. And that is why it was an excellent adventure, besides being a bit of a road trip as well, because really it brought home that I ‘should’ do these things more often!<\/p>\n

So what did we do on the excellent adventure?<\/p>\n

— We went over to Akaroa (NZ’s only French-in-origin settlement) and took a trip both on the harbour and beyond it along a bit of the coast, and saw Hector’s dolphins (lots of them!), white flippered penguins and NZ fur seals.<\/p>\n

— And also visited the Giant’s House in Akaroa, the most amazing garden that is full of colourful mosaic sculptures. This I have seen several times now and it is always stunning.<\/p>\n

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Mt Cook, seen across Lake Pukaki<\/p><\/div>\n

— the next loop of the road trip was down through the South Canterbury hinterland to Mt Cook National Park. Mt Cook, or Aoraki, the Sky-piercer, is NZ’s largest mountain so this is alpine territory in NZ’s semi-arid high country. And <\/em>there’s a glacier—the Tasman glacier—with a terminal lake that features actual icebergs. How cool is that?<\/p>\n

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Mt Cook, across the Hooker valley<\/p><\/div>\n

—And finally we returned to Christchurch via the inland scenic route, with stops at cool places like the Rakaia gorge.<\/p>\n

And although I am an indifferent photographer, even of the ‘point and click’ school, here are a few photios by way of ‘excellent adventure’ evidence.<\/p>\n

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Iceberg<\/p><\/div>\n

PS The food encountered en route, like my photography, was mostly indifferent, although the Trading Rooms cafe in Akaroa was the exception that I’m afraid otherwise proved the rule. Sadly, the meal out we had in Christchurch must also be included in the ‘mediocre’ score card. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

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Glacier terminus with Mt Tasman behind<\/p><\/div>\n

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Rakaia Gorge<\/p><\/div>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So finally, after tweeting about this several times, here is the post on my excellent adventure—which basically involved having a visitor (always good) and using that as the spur to actually have a holiday. Basically, I haven’t had a real holiday for quite some time—they’re always ‘busman’s holidays” where I’m doing something for the book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12108"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12134,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108\/revisions\/12134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}