Tiles in Tauranga

Tauranga is on the North Island, three hours southeast of Auckland, on the Bay of Plenty. For many years Dunedin has been the fifth largest city in New Zealand, but Statistics New Zealand recently announced that Tauranga has surpassed Dunedin in population. Big event! Dunedinites assert that the counting method wasn't accurate! Tauranga puts up billboard in Dunedin saying Tauranga has better beaches! Is more beautiful! Is better than Dunedin!

Internet war starts!

We had heard about the population issues, but the internet war started while we were visiting Tauranga and we read it about it in the Tauranga newspaper. Pretty funny.

The beaches there are gorgeous, and certainly much warmer than Dunedin's beaches. The city is growing so fast that there were traffic jams when we were there, which we never see here. A slow-growing (or no-growing) city has its advantages.

Downtown Tauranga is mostly along the water, because it's a city surrounded by water on almost every side. I was captivated by one part of the downtown, where interesting paving and tiles had been used. Ever since I visited Portugal in 2003, I have admired interesting paving and tiles. Here's what one intersection looked like:



On the sidewalks around that intersection, mosaic squares were scattered along the sidewalks. The squares were about eight feet on each side. Here are some of the ones I liked: