— My Alphabe-Thursday (2nd), the letter "M" / Thursday Two Questions —

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New Zealand and Australia; more of our most recent cruise pictures
Here we have some pictures to honor Alphabe-Thursday letter "M"

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"M" is for More.  More of good things is what people are wanting.

So here are some More of my New Zealand pictures.  This will probably NOT be my last posting of them.

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First I will show this one of the Sydney, Australia, City Hall.   The outside of the building, including the clock tower, are being renovated and cleaned.

So that the Sydney residents don't forget (why else do this??) what their City Hall should look like, the contractor has build this colorful four sided frame with the tower's picture on each side.

We did not go into the City Hall.  But is was in our line of sight from our hotel room, a couple of blocks away.

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Our plane arrived in Auckland, New Zealand, at 6:00 in the morning but our ship would not be ready for boarding until the afternoon.  So for such happenings Princess has made hotel arrangements for a permanent hospitality room.  They had tea, coffee, and  snacks for us.  Princess also had a bus tour of  Auckland which we could purchase.

Mrs. Jim and I opted to not do either, the bus tour or wait in the hospitality room, but rather go for our own sight-seeing walk.  Auckland is New Zealand's largest city with a population of about 3.5 million people while the whole of New Zealand's population is only 4.5 million.  Auckland's skyline is very impressive.
 
 

We walked about a mile down Queen Street to the harbor. My cameras have taken a lot of Burger King and MacDonald's restaurants and we passed these two on the way to the harbor. 

When we reached Australia there were no Burger Kings.  Instead we found Jack's Burgers all over the place.  Burger King owns Jack's.

 

"[The] Britomart Transport Centre is the CBD public transport hub of Auckland, New Zealand, and the northern terminus of the North Island Main Trunk line. It combines a bus interchange with a railway station in a former Edwardian post office, extended with expansive post-modernist architectural elements. It is located at the foot of Queen Street, the main commercial thoroughfare of Auckland CBD, with the main ferry terminal just across Quay Street." (Wikipedia, Auckland Britomart, for more) 
 
And it is just around the corner from the Burger King.  We didn't stop at the BK, instead we caught the ferry over to Devonport.  That was about a 40 minute ride, one way. We had a very nice view of the Auckland skyline from the boat.  At the right in the picture is our ship, the Diamond Princess.
 
 
 
Devonport is a pretty little town.  Its most prominent feature is a hill named Mount Victoria pictured below on the left.  Of course mountains are meant to be climbed and Mrs. Jim and I did that. On the right, above, I am standing at the top.  Up there are a weather radar and an old bunker left there from WWII.
 
While we were up there an older man and his dog arrived, both having climbed the hill.  The man told us that he had originally lived in Scotland, quite a few years back had come to New Zealand to visit his sister, and then just stayed.  He was a sheep shearer in Scotland and also did that in NZ.  But he had to learn to shear them the New Zealand way.  We talked with him for about half an hour and must have picked his brain dry.
 

 
What is a Ute?   A ute is a pickup truck that uses a car body (Ford example).  The green one above is a modern Volkswagen Golf vehicle with a ute body.  In the states the Chevy El Camino and the Ford Ranchero pickups (New Zealand and Australia called those utes) are U.S. models that you might remember.

==> You can see other "M" letter posts by visiting Jenny's blog post, Alphabe- Thursday. My letter "M" portion of this post will be critiqued by Head Mistress Jenny. I always hope for a good grade.

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Now for my Thursday Two Questions.

My last post last week was about a "L" word, Laugh (also smile).

My Two Questions for this week (you can answer just one if you wish):.

1. Do you ever have More things you like than you can ever tell about?

 

So far, since 2005, I have not run out of things to blog about.  Nor is my honey-do list ever emptied; etc. for other items.

2. What does a hill or little mountain in your way have for you to do?

I have climbed many, many, little 'mountains' and hills  Two of the most fun were Franklin Mountain in El Paso which I would climb at least once or twice every year and the little mountain range behind Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. 

With my artificial knee joint I have slowed down on the climbs but I still like and can do most of them.

Bonus Question: What is your favorite "M" word?
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==>  My post is for Amanda at her Thursday Two Questions blog, Self Sagacity.
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