October 31, 2023 Travel Day (Day 34)
Our last morning with the wonderful Bay of Islands view.
Today we left Bay of Islands to continue our tour of New Zealand. We left in a light rain and traveled to Auckland, through misty rain, heavy rain and sideways rain. I wonder if the Maori have many names for different grades of rain, like the Inuit have for grades of snow? We finally made it to our destination, The Convent Hotel, a boutique hotel near downtown that was a convent in it’s early days. An interesting history of the building can be found HERE. 
The walls are covered with eclectic art, some with religious tones.
Cabinets have religious figures and artifacts that may have been used at the convent.
After settling in we went for a walk around the area to stretch our legs. The area seems to be gentrifying, with many older maybe 1920’s era houses being restored, and a few very dilapidated houses yet to be fixed up.
This mosaic was one of several along a wall in the shopping and dining strip a few blocks along the street.
This row of houses with the same peaked roof design exemplify the style of housing in this neighborhood. Almost all the houses have metal roofs.
It being Halloween here, we saw kids in costume with Moms and Dads tagging along, trick or treating on the residential streets. It’s a relatively new tradition here, so we didn’t see elaborate Halloween decorations anywhere, but there was some!
Happy Halloween!
October 31st, 2023 at 11:51 am
The row of houses with the same, somewhat elaborate, architectural details must have kept several workshops of craftsmen happily busy. I hope.
November 3rd, 2023 at 1:09 am
It looks like the neighborhood was developed in the 20’s, when the Convent was built too. The history link really shows how much the place has gentrified. In the 1990’s it looked pretty rough!