UTP 10 - Day 0 - Sat, 13 Feb 2016

#UTPCruise - Cheryl and I arrived in Auckland after 24 hours of travelling leaving -22C temps for +25C and the extra sunshine of the longer days that come with summer.

Auckland in a cosmopolitan city of 1.5 million people, making up one-third the population of New Zealand. The world has homogenized to the point that Auckland is a modern large city like most others with skyscrapers and freeways and recognizable stores and restaurant chains found elsewhere, so you’re never too far away from a Starbucks. It is a beautiful city with grand architecture, old and new, a vibrant downtown with lots of young people, with lots of growth, construction and reconstruction taking place.

Last night, Cheryl and I attended an Unlock the Past pre-cruise dinner at the Historic Tony’s Steakhouse. If followed the Auckland land seminar held that day at the Auckland Library.

Thirteen of us gathered last night at Tony’s Steakhouse including Judy Russell and Paul Blake who were the two speakers for the seminar, Geoff and Marg Doherty and Eric and Rosemary Kopittke and Helen Smith, who will be speakers on the cruise, Alan Phillips, the man in charge, and three ladies who were the organizers from the Library. There were group pictures taken which I’ll link to from here once someone posts one.

Today we board the Celebrity Solstice for the start of what is likely the longest (19 day) genealogy conference ever held with more lectures (72) that one person can attend than any other. I expect it will be a wonderful intimate gathering with lots of time for everyone to get to know everyone else very well.

I will be attempting to blog and even live tweet occasionally during the conference/cruise. I can’t guarantee how much, as it’s dependent on the quality of the wifi on board and my available free time. I am computerless and laptopless and paperless, using only my phone for this trip. My phone app for blog posting is not anything as nice as Live Writer, so blogging will be a bit more challenging. But we’ll see how it goes.