Auckland

Wednesday night Felice and I trudged through the rain and had a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant relatively close to the hotel. The restaurant was not good enough to remember or share the name, though. The hotel, The Rydges is close to the Sky Tower and is centrally located.

A warning about the Sky Tower follows.

http://skywalk.co.nz/ 

The Sky Tower at 1,076 feet tall bills itself as the tallest man-made structure in the Southern Hemisphere, but I have not fact checked that. Unlike say The Empire State Building or other tall structures in the US, not only can one go to the observatory and see the city and surroundings from a high elevation, but one can do a couple of other things that if viewed by the average uninitiated passerby can cause a moment of extreme angst. Specifically, one can either wander around the top of the observatory on a four foot ledge, protected from falling by a harness connected to the building or you can base jump from the top of the tower to a number of feet of the ground. If one is unaware of the latter and happens to look up at the wrong moment, one can briefly believe that they are witnessing a very bad event. Trust me, it is scary if you are not prepared. 

The Rydges Hotel is not a bad place and it was chosen for location and WiFi availability. Thursday we had a quick breakfast at Hollywood Cafe. No real semblance to Hollywood and nothing more than a coffee shop,  but we were in a hurry to get to the 11:00 AM ferry to Wahike Island. This island is the third most populated island of New Zealand, after considering the North and South Islands and has less than 10,000 in permanent population. It claims to have a lot of arts as well as many, many wineries. (Of course, we have come to find that wineries (and sheep and lumber) is what drives New Zealand or at least New Zealand tourism.) Once there, we walked into  Oneroa which had a few galleries . We then decided to walk to the Mudbrick Winery. On the way we found a gallery in someone's  house and then completed our trek where we had lunch. We went to Mudbrick because of the many recommendations about the food, remembering that Felice and I barely know red wine from white wine. We highly recommend Mudbrick as the food was incredible and I am sure the wine was great but of course we didn't imbibe. 

From there we headed back to the harbor, but found a trail although hilly and totally under cover was a lot of fun.  We went to a part of a sculpture exhibition and then back to the ferry for a 40 minute trip back to Auckland. After a rest we wanted to pig out on pizza as we walked 8.8 miles for the day and went to Sal's Pizza, which claims to be affiliated with the NY Sal's.  It was okay, but not real NY pizza as pizza is not a staple in NZ. While quite a heavy dinner, all of the walking we did in the hot sun likely made dinner a calorie-neutral event. Well, probably not.

We woke up Thursday morning  to find that we both got a little more sun than we thought. We determined that we would survive but slathering on the sun block became our modus operandi. After a quick bite at Gloria Jean's Coffee Shop, it was off the catch the Quick Link bus, making stops starting at the Auckland War Memorial  Museum. As an aside, when traveling it is usually my intent to represent the University Arizona either with a logo-ed shirt or a UofA emblem hat. So on my second day out, I was wearing my UofA hat (trying to avoid the sun while repping the Cats). Within 10 minutes I was approached by a guy a little older than me wearing the same exact hat and of course he said, "Bear Down." Felice took a picture of my new-found friend to submit for Wildcat Wednesdays.

We bought the whole museum package which includes the museum entrance, a Maori presentation and a guided tour. While pricey, it was well worth it. During the presentation I learned more about the origins of the Haka dance and saw it presented. Of course I got my picture taken with a dancer, which I will not share here. For the uninitiated of my readers, the Haka is an integral part of the University of Arizona pre-game football ritual so I was very interested to learn more about it and to learn how to do it.

From the museum  it was across the Domain (think Central Park) back to the bus to go to Posonby Street. While on the bus, another person getting on came up to me and said she and her family were from Tucson and the UofA. Of course I said  Bear Down and was in Wildcat Heaven figuring that the rest of the month would be filled with Bear Down and Go Cats.

Posonby Street, called Auckland's hippest street, wasn't worthy of the stop so after 15 minutes we caught the next bus back to the hotel. We stopped  by the Sky Tower, but chose not to either go up, do the tethered walk or the plunge. The excuse was the high winds and clouds. Can you imagine Felice doing a bungy jump? Think Tower of Terror. In the evening we planned to head out for a little better dinner than the prior night and pack for the cruise. The plan was to totally prepare for the transfer to the ship and begin organizing for our work portion of our trip on the ship, which includes organizing a cocktail party and an excursion.