On a hot summers day just a few days before Christmas, Mum and I took off on a little tiki tour to Howick Historical Village in the East of Auckland for a little wander and a history lesson…an old dog can learn new tricks or in this case a bit of history.
The village consists of a number of cute cottages and takes you through Auckland’s colonial history; you may end up wanting to move into the Howick Historical village as it’s pretty darn cute! To protect Auckland from possible attacks from the Maori’s or French (neither happened), the Governor sent retired soldiers from Britain to protect the area with the promise of free passage to New Zealand for themselves and family, a cottage and an acre of land.
The Fencibles unfortunately didn’t get a cottage on arrival and lived in tents…not very luxurious at all
…a room for two…
…then things got slightly better…they moved out of their tents…
…and moved into houses with shelving which I’m sure was a huge improvement…
…but it did get a lot better when they started to build their little cottages…
…so…
…many…
…cottages…
…which you can snoop inside…
…and mum and I are snooping ninjas…
…I learnt from the best, didn’t I mama!
I found the cottage of my dreams…but then mum staked a claim first by placing her bottom in the chair first…darn you instagram and needing to take a million photos of cute little cottages…
…it even came with it’s own scarecrow in the garden…
…I so wanted to move in!
The General Store was just across the way so we popped in for some snacks…
…but everything was out of date, go figure!
We popped into church…
…and then I made mummy go back to school where she played the naughty school girl sitting at the back of the classroom…
…I loved everything about this classroom…
…so much history.
Walking around the Howick Historical Village is thirsty business so we popped into the pub but the service was non-existent…
…just when you need a little drink!
Mum and I went for a wander around the gardens…snapping the bees feasting on the old fashioned roses (peonies eat your heart out…old fashioned roses are about to have a major comeback baby!)…
…a Christmas Candle tree…
…a cheesey snap in between the roses…
…and of course, we took an obligatory shoefie (next time I’m just packing Birkenstocks as I wore them everywhere in New Zealand!).
Thinking that she liked the cute little cottage that I fell in love with, mum found a bigger and better property…
…mum lists on her cv the following roles: a shopping ninja, a snooping ninja and a christmas ninja so she was right in her element with the christmas table setting…so much so that we went promptly home after our visit so mum could lay out the christmas table setting…
…of course mum wanted the house and had already worked out how many christmas trees she would require to decorate the house during the festive period (mum had three last year!)
^^Mum photobombing my photo…I come from a family of photo bombers…thanks Teresa for teaching them this skill!
Of course we had a little selfie moment (check out the scary selfie eyes)
Popping upstairs we checked out the bedrooms to make sure mum was happy about the size…which she was…
…and worked out that she would need a larger tree than this one at the top of the stairs…
…popping back downstairs…
…we had to check that the kitchen had a butlers pantry (mum’s next house will have a butlers pantry and a view of something…poor poor dad when all you hear is, it doesn’t have a butlers pantry…hehe, dad takes it all in his stride…well most of the time)…
…happy to see that there was a butlers pantry, we thought about coming back when it got dark with a large truck and removing the whole house from the site but then santa wouldn’t stop off and deliver presents if we nicked a large house a few days prior to christmas now would he.
Realising that we were rather thirsty we popped into the cafe inside the Howick Historical Village for a cup of tea for mummy and a lime milkshake for myself…and there were quite a few sweet and savoury gluten free options available at the cafe so you definitely won’t go hungry.
^^No hands milkshake slurping action going on…mum was rather proud of me especially when I gave myself a milkshake moustache…and I don’t wear make up on holiday either hence why you can see my iron deficient panda eyes in all their glory.
The Howick Historical Village costs NZD15 per person to enter and you can learn more about the village by popping over to their website.
You can read about my other Tiki Tour’s here including Duder Regional Park, Hunua Falls, Muriwai Beach and Piha, Hamilton Gardens and Wellington.
xx
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