You may have noticed that nobody on here has mentioned the train in New Zealand yet. What, you didn't know New Zealand had a train??? Perhaps you haven't heard of it is because the rest of the Selbies found themselves less afraid of the NZ airplanes (see South Island video footage), or maybe they just wanted to get to their destinations quicker. Either way, David and Isabelle found the train to be a joyful and quaint way to get up the North Island... kind of.
We took the train at the end of our journey to get from Palmerston "Palmy" North to Auckland. Mere dropped us off at the station in the morning and we wandered about it in confusion until the train arrived, still slightly confused but boarded it nontheless. If you, dear readers, are confused by our confusion (ack!) this is because the "station" appeared to be completely empty and there was no help to be found. Basically, it looked abandoned. However, this is New Zealand so perhaps to them it looked jam packed full of people!!
We boarded the tiny tiny train (the metro cars in NYC are longer) and headed forth on our journey across the North Island.
David and I counted that we saw: 3 dead sheep, one man waving at the side of the road with a red flag (our kind crew told us to look our for him), 3 scarier than the old Cooper River Bridge bridges (that we crossed), and I'm sure I'll think of some other clever things later.
We also had 2 attendants (or whatever you call them) who would make an announcement every 5 minutes to tell you some history about the train or where we were going or what we were passing by. This was no Amtrak, folks. They would even come by to check if anybody needed anything from the dining car (which was only one car away!). Other than that the highlights were probably the girl in headphones next to us who sang the entire way there (loudly) or the obnoxiously loud-laughy-etc English group 3 rows in front of us. Though, perhaps they were just trying to drown out the singing girl. Who knows.
We did get to stop along the way while they changed crew and David and I found a cute little coffee shop where I ate "the #1 carrot cake in New Zealand". Yea, it was pretty good.
So, the big question is... Would we take it again????
...probably not .
5 comments:
Finally, some train pictures. Well, I bet the tranzalpine express is pretty neat.
Yep. It was ok. I'm just still debating whether I would recommend it. It's a tough one because it was really beautiful and an interesting ride with more of the countryside that we hadn't seen... but it did take up the whole day. I guess we could compare it to Claire's bus travels? Claire?
Why didn't anyone ask that girl to stop singing? had to be annoying....
enjoyed hearing more about the trip though.
I am having a laughing fit and Franziska (friend of mine, who I got this apartment from) and Juno (her sweet dog) are asleep already! Dagn you!
How do you FIND these stories to LIVE in??!?!?!?
Maybe you are the next Tina Fey? I laugh at(/with?) her a lot too.
THIS IS SO FUNNY STILL THAT SOMEBODY CAME UP TO ME AND ASKED ME IF I WAS OK!!!
Oh man... we ALL need to re read these (which I'm actually only doing because I'm looking for that pic of dad and little john on the riding lawnmower)
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