Sydney weekend - at the Opera

During our weekend in Sydney 13 - 15 April we attended a Shakespeare play at the Sydney Opera House. It was the tragic story of MacBeth.

Here's Patrik and parents, Kerstin & Ronny.
As most people know the Sydney Opera House would not have been so beautiful if it wasn't for the Swedes. The entire surface of the Opera House is covered with tiles from Höganäs.

Christchurch - New Zealand

After a few days in Auckland we flew to Christchurch. Christchurch is the largest city on the South Island of New Zealand. The city has a great heritage from the English settlers that arrived 1850. Similarly to Melbourne, Christchurch has old trams running around the centre of the city.

New Zealand is well known for its sheep and the landscape scenery is beautiful.


On our last day in NZ we drove out to the "French Peninsula". It was hard to capture this beautiful place in photos.


Kerstin & Patrik enjoying themselves at the warf.

Aukland - New Zealand

For our Easter break we took off to Auckland, the Northern Island of New Zealand.
We met with Patriks parents, Ronny and Kerstin there. It's been about 9 months since we saw them in Sweden so we had lots to talk about.

Auckland is beautifully situated surrounded by lots of bays and the ocean almost surrounds the city.

We headed off to Rotorua to see the fantastic volcanic activity. The city is also known for the tribal home of the Te Arawa people, who settled here more than 600 years ago.
The geothemal activity was wide awake!

Geysers


Boiling mud pools
Maori Art in Te Puhi - Rotorua

Hobbiton - This is where the Hobbits live! The movies about the Hobbits was recorded here.

New Art Gallery & Public Library in Brisbane

Brisbanes new art gallery and the new public library has now opened and we paid them a visit.
The architecture of the two houses was quite impressive.

The library was an old building but it's got a new facelift and new extention.

A large open atrium is at the very centre of the building. The building is 5 stories tall.

There are some great reading areas in the new sections of public library. This room faces Brisbane river.

More nice quiet reading space.


This is the entrance of the Gallery of Modern Art.

The Gallery has two parts, one white (to the right) and one black (to the left).
The entrance is in the middle of these two parts.

The building is very spaceous and lets a lot of indirect sunlight in. It can hold quite a number of exhibitions at the same time.

Australian Footy at the Gabba

Saturday the 30 March was the first game of AFL in Brisbane for this season. AFL is played at "the Gabba" in Wollongabba. This is a oval ground used for Cricket or AFL.
The Brisbane team is the Lions. Check them out on lions.com.au

Lucky enough Rob (Patriks workmate), Robs mom and brother Tim was there to explain the rules of the game to us. All three are great fans of AFL.

There are 18 players on the field, and the ball has a similar shape to the Rugby ball. The ball can be run with 15 Meters, it can be bounced with while running and it can be kicked. Passes to other players can only be done by kicking the ball or hand bowling. No passes are allowed.

A goal is made by kicking the ball through the goalposts. There are 4 goalposts, and kicking the ball between the two middle ones gives you 6 points, while kicking the ball between any of the outer goalposts will give 1 point.

The game is very fast and was very entertaining!