Afterwards, we met up with Allie's cousin again for dinner at Lone Star in Alexandra Park.
Allie's cousin (who has lived in New Zealand most of her life) planned a day trip tour for us to Rotorua on December 11. This required a long three-hour bus ride from Auckland aboard a small tour bus. Along with others on the tour, each person had their own outing scheduled for the day once we arrived in town.
The first tourist to arrive at their destination was at the Māori Cultural Center. Everyone else was dropped off at Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Park. We had enough time to see most of the geothermal attractions, but not everything. At the designated time, we met at and piled back into the bus. The next stop was back at the cultural center to pick up the one tourist and drop off a bunch of others.
The last tourist, Allie and I were then dropped off at the Polynesian Spa for geothermal baths. Meanwhile, Allie's cousin was taken to a Redwoods Forest Tour.
The geothermal paths were relaxing, but weirdly, the highlight was when Allie and I took our first-ever cool plunges.
Feeling relaxed after 2 hours, the bus picked us up from the spa (we were the last group). After a short stop at the lake, we headed back to Auckland.
The day was long, so we didn't plan anything for the evening.
Due to delayed travel plans, we had to reshuffle several major items on our schedule for our actual arrival in Auckland, NZ. Our Hobbiton Movie Set tour was pushed off to much later in the week. We also moved our harbor cruise to December 10.
First, Allie and I did a little shopping in the morning, confirmed our cruise tickets and then did a little more shopping. We found one tourist shop that was a sister shop to the one we visited in Queenstown, but it had shirts that had good designs and fit. For the first time on our trip, we actually bought some New Zealand themed t-shirts.
Afterwards, we lined up for the harbor cruise and boarded. The trip was a circuit around the Waitemata Harbour augmented with commentary on the various locations, including a bit of New Zealand history, facts about the islands and other interesting places to visit.
On returning to the CBD, we took a bus to Newmarket to shop at the Westfield Mall. We found some Japanese themed stores with a lot of cute anime items, of which we bought a few. We then found a store full of actual Japanese products, again buying some items that were actually needed during our trip. We also found some good options for dinner at the mall's food court, but chose a great broad noodle dish at a Thai fusion stand.
As the mall was closing, we purchased a couple more needed items from a bookstore, then headed to the bus line to return to the hotel. We did not want to stay out too late anyway since we had to get up early the next morning for a tour planned by Allie's cousin who has been living in New Zealand for most of her life.
Malarkey is a colorful and punchy term for nonsense or foolishness. It can also be used to describe insincere or exaggerated talk. It is a word that carries a specific weight when you use it to dismiss claims or excuses as hogwash. While it has become a staple of American political discourse, it remains an informal, playful and expressive way to call out empty rhetoric. [1] [2] The origin of the word is famously murky, which is fitting for a term that means nonsense. Evidence points to its emergence in North America during the early 1920s. The first known use is often attributed to the Irish-American cartoonist Thomas Aloysius (Tad) Dorgan, who began using the term in his cartoons in Mid-1920s. By the end of that decade, the word had begun to appear more widely in print. [3] Despite various theories, the etymology remains officially unknown. Some linguists and researchers have suggested potential links to the Greek word malakia, which can mean softness or, in a figurative sense, effeminacy or weakness. Others have pointed to the Irish surname Mullarkey (and its various spellings), though there is no verified connection between any individual of that name and the word’s development. There is even a niche theory suggesting it might be related to the London expression Madame Misharty, a personification of wild sales talk. Still another possibility is some use of the Gaelic root word "meall-", which means being deceptive or lying. [3] Because the word began as slang in the United States, it is not traditionally found in older printed dictionaries from the 19th century. However, it is now widely recognized in major modern dictionaries as a standard, though informal, English noun. [3] According to Google ngram, common use of malarkey appears in the 1920s and then took off in the 1930s. |
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A bird that appears to be a Say's Phoebe was jumping from fence post to fence post ahead of me and Joie while we walked, until it finally flew onto a nearby bush, on a Mid-Spring morning. It kind of seemed like they wanted us to follow, but maybe they were just keeping an eye out for any bugs we might stir up as we walked along the trail, a behavior for which Flycatchers are known.
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