Lets go Lego

Up early on Thursday and  used our HOP cards to take the Link bus. First of all we checked out 3 Cowie Street where Duncan used to live - just a huge wall with a key pad gate. Then we proceeded on foot to the Museum. First up was the Lego exhibition.
My pick was St Basil's in Moscow and Duncan's was the Mona Lisa mosaic and A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Seurat.

This took the longest time to create owing to all the irregular circular shapes. St Basil's took 320hours to complete

She captured the same enigmatic smile, but many times the size of the original in the Louvre

The builders love these tall repetitive strures like Big Ben

Around many of the displays were pits of Lego pieces - the kids couldn't help them selves, but play. We were by Michelangelo's David, and I asked this child of about 3 what he was going to build and he replied he was going to build his head. I whispered to the Dad "I admire his ambition"

The Taj Mahal was another spectacular display. It is white not rose as they can only use traditional lego pieces rather than have them specially made.

This was a controversial piece as it showed people doomed to perish in the water.

Then we went to another special exhibition on Anne Frank and finally went to the War Memorial exhibition up on the third floor.

Duncan in front of a Spitfire

Since it was just after the Anzac Ceremony this memorial was festooned with flowers.

After lunch at the Museum Cafe it was time to accept The HOP challenge and take the ferry to Devonport for a cup  of coffee. It was a beautiful fine afternoon and downtown Auckland  started to look rather charming!

Leaving Devonport

In the evening we meet up with Christine and Alan Marino and their son Ben, who is about Jill's age. We went around a few places on the viaduct and finally settled on Lulu's Inn for a nice relaxed meal where there wasn't too much music blaring. Lots of old stories from the past. Christine still loves her job as manager at Ronald Mac Donald House, where they also live, and Alan mans the desk on 3 nights

And they talked, and talked and talked..

HOP to it, HOP on it.

Wednesday morning we walked to the Britomart to get our HOP cards which give Gold Card Pensioners free train, bus and ferry transport in Auckland any time after 9am. We walked back along the viaduct. They are having "The Big Hoot" which is a series of large fibreglass owls decorated by different artists. I like the Meowl which combined elements of cats (meow) and owls.

Meowl

and the bright Beach T'owl. There was also a series of plaques telling of the Marine History and all those gorgeous boats to ogle at.
Hugh and Cathy Douglas picked us up and took us to the Mission Bay Pavilion for lunch and then we went to look at their new home by the Remuera Golf Course - Duncan correctly identified the hole as the 9th!.

Caught up with families

Did a little bit of optometry talk.

Between the 4 of us we had quite a string of ailments. It was late afternoon and Hugh was getting concerned about the traffic - "No worries we said, we'll take the train." Easy peasy with our HOP cards.

We had a little nap before heading out to one of the viaduct restaurants for a light meal.

Taking the prize

We set off on our Leaderbrand "Land Feud" prize with some trepidation as their did not seem to be much paperwork. At the last possible minute she emailed through our tickets to the show and miraculously our names appeared "on the list" at Air NZ, the airport shuttle and the Hotel register. The Sebel is very well appointed - except for a most uncomfortable square loo seat!!

We went out and bought eggs and toast so that we could have breakfast in our room - what an absolute mess Downtown Auckland is!
"Vital" the display of corpses was on the viaduct Obviously their was a limit to what you can do with a plasticised corpse, but there were also other interesting displays on dementia, clots, obescity and diabetes which were of particular interest to me, while Duncan lingered over the knee exhibits!

This is a reference to the shroud. In olden days they believed that the corpse ate the shroud because they didn't know about about decomposition.

You can see the clot on the brain as a dark mass

The photo frames are starting to empty out

What a lot of intestine!!

An obese person

An underweight person.

After a wee nap and a cup of tea we set out for the comedy show with Paul Chowdhry. Hwe worked the audience very well with the general theme of discrimination. His family came to London in 1910, but he still gets the migrant tag. He obviously enjoyed the audience interaction so much that he ran overtime - and so it was a very late Italian Dinner on the way back to the Sebel.

No photos at Paul Chowdhry, so I tried a selfie while we waited.