Well, after wetting your appetite, we hope you are all looking forward to seeing some Hobbit’s in this version of the blog.

In fact, we are offering a prize to the first responder who replies and is successful in seeing a Hobbit 👍👍 and no, you are not allowed to have a drink before examining the ‘evidence’.

Ok, we docked in Tauranga and disembarked to board the bus that was taking us to the Hobbiton Movie Set and to be fair, although we were in a rush to get there and the trip took quite a while, we enjoyed some lovely scenery and we could begin to see why the movie makers picked such a great spot.

Then we started to see signs for the Movie Set and started to get excited.

Until finally, we made it 👍👍

It was brilliant, the whole valley was covered in Hobbit Holes, apparently 39 in total!

These are just a few and no, before any smart alec’s say they can see Hobbits, that’s us doing a self!

and a few more!

and a few more!

What do you mean, that’s enough!, no it’s not, oh, ok, here are the last few 👍

Ha ha, why show you a tree?

Well this tree is artificial and because original book, said that there was a tree behind Bilbo Baggies house and there wasn’t a real tree where they wanted to site his house, they built an artificial tree 😂😂

The building work for the original film ‘The Lord of the Rings’ started in March 1999 and the filming started in December and took 3 months.

The building work (improvements to the original set), for the second film ‘The Hobbit Trilogy’ took 2 years (yes, that’s right 2 years!) and the actual filming took just 12 days!!!

A couple more to finish.

Then off to the Green Dragon Inn for a couple of swift halves (beer).

Ok, that’s enough, back on the bus for the long ride back to the ship, after a great day out, then off to our final port of call and where we were getting of the ship in Auckland to begin our next part of the trip.

When we arrived in Auckland we were astounded by just how many ships/boats there were in the various harbours, so not to be left out we thought we had better buy one, so we chose a few first then decided which one after very careful consideration.

We looked at this one 👍

Then this one 👍

Then this one 👍

Then finally this one, which the Managing Director said we must have, not sure why?

But, unfortunately, when we went to buy it, we were told it was no longer available – grrr.

On our second day, we took a ferry trip out to Waiheke Island (see above) and on arrival we were amazed (honest) to learn there were 30 small wineries 👍👍😂😂🍷🍷 on the island!

BUT, on arrival, because it was a National Holiday called Waitangi Day, most of the wineries were closed – Ahhhhhhhh, but we still managed to keep smiling!

Waitangi, is the place where a treaty was signed between the British Crown and the Maori people and unfortunately today there is a lot of bad feeling about just what the treaty did to them.

Thats enough for today, more in the next blog about Aukland and where we are going from Auckland.

🍷🍷🍺🍺👫