The weekend with aurora everywhere and Iona up here and Eurovision on and this is not unconnected

 Hi,

Friday was the most stunning day here in Wellington. I was up early ish to get the bikes ready for a ride with Iona. Spring Challenge training. Except, it was 10am by the time I left here. And we needed a coffee so when we got to Paekakariki, we went to a cafe and enjoyed a pastry and a delicious coffee.

Loved the sunlight coming through the windows

Bikes ready

Paekakariki iced latte

Oh - Kapiti! You look gorgeous

Then we were off to explore. From Queen Elizabeth park, we went up to the north, but trying to get off onto gravel and farm roads when we could. I used no electrons! We had such fun.

Love this view

Where are you?

Bridge to somewhere

Selfie

Here I am!

Let's go!

Dropped Iona back at Tawa and headed home at 2pm. Put the bikes away and changed my shoes and then went into East Day Spa to use my Christmas voucher.

Feet pampered

Looking good

A very nice hour-long foot session. Mmmm. Thank you Mike. And thank you spa person. My feet look amazing. And she even found my left littlest toenail was there. Grown back after the tramping punishment. So I did not need a discount for only having 9 toenails. Hahahah.

Mike collected me from the spa after his work finished. And we drove home. And Sarah, Hamish and Ryan turned up for pizza night.

Moxley loves me

Saturday night saw us sleep in. I got French toast from Mike. Wow. And then we had Sally and Andrew visit for lunch. Choice!

French toast from Mike

Moxley is so asleep

Brunch!

Iona came over and we dragged her grocery shopping for Eurovision on Sunday. Before bundling her in the car for aurora hunting. The aurora alerts I often watch had predicted a huge solar storm. And just before it kicked in to epic levels, the cloud came over. Gah!

I saw a bz of -38 and a kp of 8! Those are huge numbers. We got to the car park just 200m west of Owhiro Bay and parked up. It was fairly full. The sky looked a little unusual. So I took a pic using my Raw camera app. And I was astonished to see it showed a fully red sky. To the naked eye, it looked like the clouds had a hint of a red blush. Nothing like my camera showed.

South Coast aurora

I could see this with my naked eye

Surf and aurora

I absolutely loved it. We stood watching for about 1.5 hours. Then drove up to Woodridge to see if that was above the cloud cover. But the light pollution from there was not much good. Off home and off to bed.

Aurora over Toby's bedroom

Toby got to see the aurora from his house! He looked out above his room - and there it was!

It was Eurovision the next morning, after all. So we got a good sleep in. Up at 6am to get the food ready. And we were on!

Sunday morning is Eurovision

And it starts!

Brekkie disappearing

Punters

We had Wally, Brennan and Jason turn up to experience the Eurovision spectacular. Sarah was a tad late - but not too much. And Maarten and Irina arrived just as we got halfway through the countries. They caught up pretty quick.

All entranced

Iona was up after a good sleep. And Ange was knocking on the door early. We had 10 of us. And it was an amazing Eurovision. The Netherlands was disqualified 2 hours before it - controversy. I heard the Swiss one and after 2 bars, said it was terrible. It won! Finland had no pants on for theirs.

What am I even watching? Finland has no pants on!

Went out to Hillside Kitchen for a degustation lunch at 1pm. So good. Sally, Andrew, me, Mike and Iona. Delicious. We chatted away. Every course was delicious. Best one - maybe the onion and lime soup. I know! Sounds weird, right? So, so good.

We took Iona to the airport for her flight and then Mike and I sat in the back of the car at the beach to see if we could spot the aurora again.

Sunday aurora hunting - relaxed style

We ate chippes and read books. Toby rang and we saw for ourselves how bad his hand, foot and mouth virus was. His wee face is covered in sores. His feet look terrible! OMG. He is still quite miserable. But he chatted away to us for about 30 mins as we lay in the car. Wished me a happy mother's day. Awww. I wish I could help him as he recovers from this.

We saw nothing of the aurors this time! But I loved just being there with Mike and absorbing the atmosphere. It was full of people keen to see this amazing natural phenomenon.  Eventually we gave up with the low kp and Bz numbers and went home and off to bed. I had the best, long sleep in ages!

Such an awesome weekend. Eurovision. Aurora. Iona. Cycling. Eating. Loved every minute of it. Thank you.

Love,

Angela