Auckland, New Zealand

 March 7, 2011

I know I've been slacking off… but you are only going to get one entry for two whole weeks in Auckland!

We were both pretty excited about Auckland. Our own nice little furnished studio apartment in downtown Auckland for cheap! Only 350 a week! I have to say that I scored when I found this apartment on Agoda. The apartment ended up being just what we needed, a clean bathroom, bedroom, kitchen area with washing/drying machine and a living room with reclining chairs. It even had Internet! We also had an 18th floor balcony with a view over downtown and the water. I didn’t spend much time out there (it was quite terrifying!) but enjoyed the view from the safety of the apartment 😀

View from the apartment

For the first few days we just relaxed. We wandered around downtown, slept in, ate food that isn’t good for us and generally did nothing… I know, I know… this sounds like what we do all the time 😉

Relaxing as usual!

One day we wandered over to the Sky Tower. Steve was almost giddy with excitement to discover how big the casino was. (We had figured it wouldn’t be that good after finding out the ones in Queenstown hadn’t had a poker game going in months.) This casino however, did have a poker room… and people played in it every night!

We checked out the tourist area of the Sky Tower. You can just go up, do the walk around the outside edge of the Sky Tower, or even jump off the Sky Tower. We both felt like the prices were ridiculously high, and left. (As usual, New Zealand is outpricing themselves with everything related to the tourist industry. Not that either of us are silly enough to jump off the Sky Tower anyway…)

One afternoon we went to the theatre to watch Unknown with Liam Neeson. (It’s new here… how long has it been out at home?) We were able to take advantage of "cheap $10 Tuesday"… although I would argue that this is not cheap… We do want to enjoy the movie theatres a bit though, before we head back to the Non-English speaking countries 😀

One of the things that Steve is quite fond of in Auckland is the “diagonal crosswalk”. When it is time to cross, all cars in all directions are stopped. The pedestrian can cross either way, or diagonal right through the middle if necessary. This is faster for the pedestrian and the cars, as the cars aren’t waiting for any slowpokes to get across when they are waiting to turn. Plus it’s fun to walk straight through the middle of a downtown intersection!

Another day we wandered down to the harbour area and enjoyed a walk by the water.

We found an awesome restaurant where we enjoyed a glass of wine, some yummy bread and the best seafood chowder we’ve ever had. It was so good I took a picture of it!

We went past the tourist office and I picked up a bunch of brochures for things to do while we were in Auckland. We felt sufficiently rested up by then, and were ready to do some exploring.

So… that night Steve goes to the casino again.

Side note about the Casino: We both agreed that if he went every second night, that I could amuse myself and have some alone time. I’m the kind of girl who needs alone time. (If you’re interested in how he did at the casino, we can sum it up like this… First he went up… then he went WAY up… then he had a bad run of it and came back down, down, down until he was pretty much even… he ended up a little bit down.) Steve’s decided that one day we’ll come back again for a “working vacation”. That means he works at the poker tables at night, and entertains me around Auckland during the day. I am fully in agreement with any plan that involves me being on vacation!

Night view of Auckland

Okay… back to the night when Steve heads to the casino. I spend my night watching very bad TV (Kardashians, E News… can someone please explain to me why the Kardashians get a show?????), talking to my friends back home on the Internet and generally lazing about. I get up to go to the bathroom, and stub my toe on a chair. What’s interesting about that… we all do that all the time don’t we? Yeah… this time I heard a crack and then said quite a few words that I won’t repeat here… Sigh… clumsy Lisa appears out of nowhere and breaks her toe. (I couldn’t even blame it on the motion sickness pills this time… apparently I’m just really clumsy!)

Well this ended up putting a damper on my plans to do all these other things in Auckland. I put the brochures in a drawer and spent the rest of my time mostly hanging out on the couch.

We did spend one day hanging out with Hoori, Sheree, Manaia and Hawaiki. We had a lot of fun playing with the kids, and even learned a game, which I like to call “Manaia-opoly”. This game is played with a standard monopoly board, but involves rules like-- if you land here you get whatever money Manaia wants you to have from the bank (don’t worry it doesn’t really matter, because that isn’t how you win). My favourite rule was that whoever lands on a certain square loses. Steve lost first… and then Manaia and I kept playing. I was pretty certain that I would lose next since Manaia would roll the dice and then do a bit of creative counting when she moved her piece 😉 In the end, Manaia won (surprise, surprise!) and everyone was happy!

We did have an enjoyable day eating ice cream and playing with the kids. Sheree told me later that Manaia was already missing Uncle on the way home, and thought we should move in with them 😀

As my toe started to feel a bit better we did a bit of walking, but not too much. I feel like I spent an inordinate amount of time on the couch. So because of this, we decided that we will definitely return to Auckland for another vacation… besides Steve has to come back and win me lots of money in the casino!

Now we're off to Thailand!