Tons of fun in Hamilton

Cosmonauts and caracals

It's been a loooonnng time since we last had a trip away. We had the sunny beaches of Fiji last year, and we have the excitement of America next year, so what would we do this year? Two nights in a city close to Auckland surrounded by fields? Hmm...

Anyway, a day off school and a long weekend is always good in my book, so we packed up and headed south to Hamilton. Ironically, we'd booked to stay at the Heartland Hotel. Not quite the right spelling, but maybe they'd let us stay free or something. No such luck.

Before we even got to the hotel, we stopped for a visit to Hamilton Zoo. The last time Mum and Dad were here was before I was born, and it's where they bought me my giraffe money box, which I'm still using today, 11 years later.

Animals are one of my favourite things, so I had a great time seeing the monkeys, rhino and tigers, though my favourite was the caracal - you can see it in the first photo below. I'd never even heard of one before, but it kinda reminded me of a wilder version of Bailey, just with weird-shaped ears.

Another place we visited was this awesome Space Museum, which had loads of cool things about space travel, including some helmets, gloves and other things from real Russian cosmonauts.

It also had a VR room where we all put on headsets and went on a journey through space visiting other planets and going through a black hole. It was really fun, and now William and me are pestering Mum and Dad daily to get a VR headset of our own for Christmas.

But it wasn't just the VR - we also got to dress up as astronauts, master a game landing a spaceship on the moon (which Mum couldn't do but I aced), beat high scores in space quizzes, and complete some activities to get Space Cadet badges. Naturally I scrambled to get as many activities done as fast as possible so I could get a higher-level badge than William.

Something Hamilton had that most places don't these days is a secondhand bookshop. All of us three boys dived in there to scour the shelves for any great finds. Me and William came away with two books each, but Dad left empty-handed.

One of the best parts of going away is the food - buffet breakfasts and yummy dinners. Each morning I started the day with about 4 plates of pikelets, muffins, bacon, fruit and loads more. Big full plates too - the sort you have to carry carefully with both hands. Then in the evening I had a massive pizza, followed the next day by a massive burger. Going back to cereal and chicken slop after we get home is going to be so hard!

And that was Hamilton. Actually much more fun than it sounded. The best thing is, there's loads more fun to come, with Christmas and summer holidays just around the corner. And just wait until you see my spooky Halloween costume...