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| View over Rangitoto |
The Croziers have
returned to Crete after a couple of months on the other side of the
world. The north shore of New Zealand is definitely a world away
from sleepy Crete, but it was a wonderful adventure and Pa Crozier
looks very fit on his return having left in rather poor shape after
the fall at home and a chesty cough caught on the journey.
First of all, we need
to record our thanks and admiration for the Passenger Assistance
offered by Olympic Airways (Heraklion and Athens), Emirates (Athens,
Dubai and Singapore) and Air New Zealand who took care of Mr Crozier
providing wheelchair assistance at all these airports. We can hardly
believe that we made it right across the world and back with such
good care and the only damage was a cracked suitcase on arrival at
Heraklion. Nothing went missing at all! Hats off to all those
people because it worked!
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| Dubai mosque |
Our first two day
stopover in Dubai was interesting. Somehow we had managed to book a
super luxurious apartment with two bathrooms, fully fitted kitchen,
two TVs in a sitting room and bedroom with air conditioned
super-duperness! We were awakened by a call to prayer from the
Mosque next door and enjoyed the Dubai sunrise. Sadly though, the
free self-serve breakfast was held in the worst possible design of
dining room I have ever experienced with no thought given to the
dynamics of 200 people needing to get plates of food and cups of
coffee from one side of a scrum to another. It was like eating in
the middle of a market place and having to fetch trays of food for K
(who cannot manage this with crutches) and then repeat the process
for myself was exhausting. We will never get used to chicken
sausages either! A bottle of wine and four beers from room service
set us back over £100 – so we decided not to go there on the way
back. We took a taxi ride across the city to a new build shopping
mall .. a bit like Arabian Nights meets Bluewater and after having a
cup of coffee at Costa(packet), we jumped in the taxi and returned
again! Not very adventurous unless you like shopping but we knew we
had no space in our suitcases!
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| Gardens by the Bay, Singapore |
We looked forward to
Singapore – thinking that it would be a little more relaxed only to
find that we had booked a hotel with a very small room. The two twin
beds were in a sort of corridor – one on the left, the other on the
right with a flight of steps in the middle. There was no window, no
bedside tables, no wardrobe and it cost us a lot of money. This is
the place that I left my slippers under the bed but nothing would
induce us to book the same place for the journey home even to
retrieve my slippers! We were too far away from shops and cafes but
were surrounded by “Spas” and 24 hour massage parlours! We took
a taxi to the Gardens by the Bay and tried to get a feel for the
city. Masses of skyscrapers, amazing plant life and trees in the
steamy heat, and shopping malls everywhere. I took a walk around the
neighbourhood to investigate Silk and Carpet shops and to look at
beautiful Mosques but sadly Raffles was surrounded by hoardings and I
didn't manage to taste a Singapore Sling. We were amused that every
taxi driver in Singapore asked us how old we were!
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| Singapore Botanical Gardens - fabulous |
Our arrival in Auckland
was lovely. The grandchildren had prepared banners, flowers and all
sorts of goodies to welcome us. The weather was atrocious and about
three or four cyclones passed over or near Auckland during our visit.
Parts of South Island were badly flooded and under emergency status.
Fortunately, in Auckland there was plenty of sunshine in between.
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| Walkway around the East Coast Bays |
We stayed in Mairangi
Bay. All the bars and coffee shops were buzzing. Men were doing
deals, joggers and dogwalkers dropped by for marvellous Brunches.
Kiwis certainly do the big breakfast thing with panache serving
fabulous breakfast dishes (some healthy, some not so healthy) but
they all came to the table with appealing style and we have a lot of
dieting to do as a result!
I did school pick-ups,
swimming galas, reading books, birthday parties, trampolining and
walking! The children are wonderfully healthy, engaging and
interesting. We revisited places I had been to on my first visits to
NZ which had changed from open countryside to completely new towns in
the meantime. The houses are LUXURIOUS, cars are LUXURIOUS, people
lived in great locations in the most beautiful surroundings. The
cost of living is horrendous! We know that our pension would never
go anywhere! However, all our plans went well. Pa Crozier went
fishing a couple of times, we ate fish and chips a lot, ate curries a
lot, ate eggs benedict a lot and generally had a jolly time while
drinking in all the lovely countryside and seaside places.
For the journey home,
we were not quite so much innocents abroad. We recommend the Ibis
Hotel on Bencoolen in Singapore and the Airport Premier Inn in Dubai
which were comfortable and had everything at hand with pleasant
service. I eventually tasted the Singapore Sling, which was
interesting but nothing like as good as Cretan fresh orange juice!
After taking in all
these palaces to the gods of materialism mid journey, it was great to
return to our little home in Crete. Look what was waiting for us!
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| Flowers, potatoes, oranges, lemons and eggs! |
I wanted to post many more lovely photos with this blog from my new camera, but each photo has taken about half an hour to upload, so I will have to do some homework on photo storage files.
