Sunday, March 3, 2013

Six Degrees of Celebration

One. Matt & I had drinks at the Maple Leaf recently before a movie.

Two. The Maple Leaf is a Canadian Pub.

Three.  I like Canadian bacon.

Four.  Before the movie, they played this ad featuring Kevin Bacon (hysterical!)



Five.  The movie we saw was The Hobbit.

Six.  The movie was filmed in New Zealand.

The point of this post...

A few weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, we joined four thousand young 
Kiwis in London as they celebrated the 30th Annual Waitangi Day Pub Crawl.



Each year New Zealanders in London celebrate with a Pub Crawl along the Circle Line.
This year the Circle Line happened to be closed for "scheduled maintenance"
but they managed without it. 
We didn't actually join the pub crawl part.

 
 (Well, maybe for just one.)
We did join them as they gathered at Old Palace Road between Parliament and Westminster Abbey for a Haka.





Doesn't she look just like Zooey Deschanel?
Everyone was in such good spirits.  There was quite a bit of drinking,
but nothing too rowdy.
They had a large area blocked off for them and a decent police presence.






  


   
These airline hostesses rode through on their Boris Bikes with cardboard
Air New Zealand airplanes around them.  Very cute.


At 4pm a large group of young men tore off their shirts and performed a traditional Haka. 
Unfortunately, I couldn't get close enough to see it.  








It was freezing that day, none of them seemed in a rush to put their shirts back on. 
(Serious blogger here.  Documenting life in London just for my readers.)



 




"Come on down from there, Mate."
He came down and they shook hands and had a laugh together.  


Everyone disbursed peacefully after the Haka, off to their after parties.  
I read later that there were no arrests.
The police were very friendly with the revelers, posing for pictures and
even letting them pose on their bikes.

 

So, if you are out and about next February
and see some people dressed up as sheep,
follow them to Parliament
and you might get to see a Haka!




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P.S.  Sorry there are so many pictures, but I just couldn't narrow it down any further.  And the commercial is only included because I think it's really funny, (and I love Kevin Bacon) not for the benefit of the advertiser.  

6 comments:

  1. That's so much fun! I had some of the best times at random festivals- I'm so glad you're documenting others to share here!

    As for eye candy, the scruffy guy in the grey and white costume with the yellow beak (?) made me pause the scrolling!!

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  2. Loved this post! Though given the small population of NZ if this many of them are in London you have to wonder how many Kiwi's are left over there ;)

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  3. What a fun event. you can always count on the Kiwis to throw a good party!!

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  4. Wow! What an experience! I've never heard of such a thing, but you took such great pictures documenting it, that I feel like I was right there with you!

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  5. Excellent capturing of the day. I run the FB page that organises this and you've definitely got the happy and easy going nature of it down to a tee.
    Next one is Feb 8th 2014, you're all very welcome to join us :)

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  6. Ha! It looks like a lot of fun but I bet some of those bare chested boys had very big colds and very big hangovers afterwards. Your photos are fantastic!

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