9 - A Bakery

When my son saw the list of items the first time, he immediately told me where to find the bakery.
Thought it was so cute he knew what we were looking for however I would have loved an oldy rustic charmed bakery.

Seems I am beginning to find fault with the town I live in and that is that they are making it all too modern and getting rid of the old charm that is the history of the place.
Everywhere you look there is new building work being done and it is ultra modern and suave looking, pristine lines and clinical looking, no character or charm!

The Bakery round the corner is the same , it is not a small locally owned place it is part of a bigger world wide chain, so what you get in one is exactly what you get in a place the same in another town or country.
Whilst some people love that type of certainty I also love the small locally owned places that serve their own creations with flavour and love.

1 - A Sign Welcoming People to Your Home Town

I am loving all the signs I am seeing during this hunt that other people are posting, their town really knows how to welcome people in.
You know you have entered the town as there is a lovely large display, creation sign to welcome you.

Seems we are not one of those towns, in fact if you come from the North there is no sign at all!
From the South then yes there is a sign but you could be mistaken for thinking it was an advert on the side of the road....

Yes we have the most boring of boring billboard signs welcoming our visitors to our town!
Ok we are lucky in that we have a sign thanking them for visiting but it is just the other side of the billboard!

Hunt Failure

I know I still have pictures to find, I have not finished the list just yet, but I am not worried as we have until middle of September to complete the hunt.

1 that is throwing me a little is 20 - a bus with a picture on the side.

I have found buses all over town with pictures on the back but not on the side, seems they have stopped doing that type of advertising on our buses! We just have plain boring buses around town!

There are just 2 buses in town that have pictures on the side of them and I am going to have to get creative and find the bus timetables online and found out what time they are in the local downtown bus depot, then I am going to have to scout the place at that time to secure my picture.

Again it is going to come back to that saying I pull out every year....

"But your honour, it was the power of the scavenger hunt I was doing, it does obsessive things to your brain and body during the months of June thru September!"

I am sure that is the excuse I would have used the other day if caught loitering around the bus station when I was trying to find a bus with a picture on the side! But then most people loiter around the station as that is what you do when waiting for a bus to arrive...loiter!

16 - A sign in a Language Other than English

And again the gardens are part of the hunt!
As they are a prime tourist destination here in Hamilton then I knew I would find a sign in another language there.
But I didn't, well I did, but only just.
I wandered all around checking the car park, the entrance area, the fountain area that leads to all the gardens, I looked in some of the gardens thinking there may be signs explaining things about the gardens, I even checked in the pavilion but nothing!

In fact it has made me start to really look around at all my local areas to see exactly what signs I can find that are not in English and I am shocked at the lack of them.
New Zealand talks all the time about the importance of Maori and their inheritance and belonging to this country but suddenly I realised there is nothing in Maori written around in everyday life.

The only sign I did actually find was on the window of the visitors centre in the gardens.
It was welcoming you to the gardens and was written in several different languages but it certainly wasn't the clearest most convenient sign I had come across!

4 - A Group of Tourists

Once more the local gardens play a huge part in the challenge.
There are always tourists roaming around these gardens, I think it is on all local tour guide itineraries!

However on the day I was there I didn't find too many! Apart from this small group being lead around by the guy, not sure what they were looking at up the tree but it seemed interesting enough to them.

19 - A Public Garden

This one for me is so easy, we are very lucky to have some amazing gardens here in Hamilton.
I know them well as it is the venue we chose for our wedding 6 years ago.

They are forever changing as the seasons go by and there is always something to look at.
I give you the Italian Garden, which is actually my favorite of the lot.