Auckland Lantern Festival

     This weekend was the Lantern Festival in Auckland. It is a large festival located in Albert Park in the Central Business District of Auckland. It is about half an hours drive from my house. I am trying to add maps to my posts. Let me know if it's helpful.
     The festival is a celebration of the Chinese New Year. There are hundreds of lanterns as well as two stages with martial arts demonstrations, karaoke, dance and cultural presentations. It is put on by the Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED) and Asia New Zealand Foundation. It has been running for 15 years. During the day there are also events for families such as kite making, tea ceremonies and crafts.
     I tried to meet some au pairs at the festival Saturday night but due to some technical issues we never met up. The cellular networks here are not so great and when there is lots of traffic on them they sort of shut down. It was difficult for us to communicate via text or call cause nothing would go through.
    Sunday T and I took the kids. It was kind of stressful to have four kids at an event with thousands of people but they actually did very well listening and staying near us. They really liked the dancing performances. We had dinner with them tonight.

Tree decorations.

     If you want to see the official blurb on the event here it is http://www.aucklandnz.com/lantern
     Here are a bunch of photos from it. Please forgive the quality. I forgot to bring my camera and took them all on my iPod.

They had lots of trees covered in lanterns of
flowers, bugs, traditional lateens and other shapes

There were areas that had scluptulrs like these.
They were amazing to look at during the night
but easier to photograph in the day

The sign next to this said it was a traditional type of lantern
even though it is a sculpture because the fisherman symbolizes
prosperity. 

Day version. Night is shown at right.

Many of the stairs up to the park were decorated
with this type of lantern. 

There were lots of dragon lanterns. This is one
of my favorites. 

They had a whole section of animals
doing people things.

This is one of my favorites. I could only
get a tiny bit in a picture. The whole thing
was quite a bit longer than a Ford Explorer
and about as tall.