I ended up going to the parade for Team New Zealand in the central city today. I ended up being across the road from Aotea Square right next to where it started just before 12.30pm. I think I was one of the lucky ones as it had finished in that part just over ten minutes later, before it started raining and I did notice it raining quite heavily after 1pm.
I do think I would have liked to have seen them on the boat sailing along the water front, which was the second part of the parade – the part I saw the team were standing in the back of Utes(?) in between various matching bands and a cheer leading squad, with the America’s Cup on the last vehicle.
I am surprised that I was able to get such a good position almost directly behind the fence as I only arrived about ten to fifteen minutes before the parade started and I was expecting there to be a lot more people there. Mainly due to the photos from the 1995 parade where there looked to be people completely lining the footpath right back to the shops, while today it was really only three to four people deep at most in the area I was in.
After watching the news coverage of the parade it does look like there were more people further down Queen Street at least and it did look like there were more people on the other side of the road. Meaning that there was just a good chance I was lucky and happened to work close to the unpopular end.
I did take some photos which I’ll post here as well, not that they’ll be all that interesting and nothing that won’t be seen in a lot of other places, and it’s safe to say that places like the TV news and the newspapers will have significantly better photos than mine as I was most behind two other people and was taking them between their heads as much as possible.