New Zealand, Auckland- Introduction

We took another mini vacation! We wanted to get away and we debated various locations but decided we might as well stay on this side of the globe. As B would not be able to take more than a week, we decided to plant ourselves in Auckland for the week. Nice temps: highs of 12 C - 18 C with a mix of sunny, cloudy, drizzly- early winter weather for Auckland.

There was a lot of construction going on near our hotel. They are building additional public transportation systems and that has spurred additional construction as well. They had workers at most corners to help folks cross the streets as it would have been difficult to navigate without help. Interestingly, at many intersections they stop traffic in all directions simultaneously so you can cross diagonally.

Our hotel was located on the end of Princes Wharf, right on the water. Here's an old photo of our hotel. From our room we had a 270 degree view of the water and city.

We enjoyed the quite varied views depending on time of day and weather.

We were sitting out on our balcony and it started sprinkling just a bit and out came this rainbow. The rainbow then seemed to travel away from us off towards the horizon and disappeared.

This view looks towards Queen Street Wharf- the next one over from us. In the right corner is more of our hotel where they were doing construction. Allegedly, only between 9 and 4. Let us just say that 9 is not the same as, say, 7:15 or 8:00. Yes, that's right, they began much earlier than 9 and also worked on Sunday- the day the hotel told us no work was to be done.

On our first night we walked to Queen's Arcade and located a yarn shop recommended by a friend. It was a small place. We bought some fat quarters. It was at that point we realized the shop hours had ended 30 minutes earlier. There was another customer in the shop after "closing" also. They were very nice to stay.

The view was pretty good at night!

 One of the many ferries.

Only two  cruise ships came in during our stay. We only saw one because the second one came the day of our 13 hr "day trip"- more on that later. This one pulled in on the far side of Queen Street Wharf.

Off in the distance we could see (right to left) North Head, Mt. Victoria as well as Rangitoto Island. It is located the furthest away. All three were active volcanoes at one time. Rangitoto erupted most recently, about 600 years ago. New Zealand is full of inactive volcanoes!

My friend had recommended we stop in at a very special ice cream shop in Auckland. The first time we walked there the queue was huge! It was on Sunday afternoon. We opted not to wait in the huge queue. On a day during the week we returned to find a very small queue.  The shop is called Giapos. They originally began their shop hosting a wide variety of flavors but business wasn't too great. They decided to change their shop to an ice cream experience shop. They take small groups- a few people at a time- and do a tasting of their 8-10 flavors. Once you select a flavor or flavors, their "ice cream chef" prepares your ice cream. The flavors are a little different but the presentation of the ice cream is their gimmick. You can get the ice cream in a cone shaped like a giant squid among others. We opted for the simple paper cup. I opted against the "toppings" which are predetermined by the chef. This was B's :

I had one flavor on the bottom and feijoa-lime ice cream on the top. The feijoa-lime ice cream was delicious but they put way too much in the cup! Don't know what a feijoa is?  It's a relative of the guava and it is everywhere in New Zealand. You eat it by cutting it in half and scooping out the flesh. Juices nicely too.
Not that much to look at, but very tasty.
All in all, it was sort of interesting, but way too expensive for ice cream.

While near the ice cream place we found an area called Britomart. It's a pedestrian only area filled with restaurants. One evening we walked back and enjoyed a really nice Italian meal at Amano's. We sat at the counter where we watched pasta being made, one guy squeezing countless lemons and more. The guy squeezing lemons was also responsible for shucking oysters which were served up on little piles of salt. This was the view directly in front of us. The place was extremely busy. One other note- they served and refilled a very nice sparking water from pitchers instead of an ordinary tap water or individual bottled water you need to purchase.

While in New Zealand we also caught the final episode of The Big Bang Theory. Very well done.We will miss that show!

Around Town:

We made good use of our feet and also jumped on the hop-on/hop-off buses when needed.

One morning we visited Bastion Point, Mt. Eden and Mission Bay and located lunch -just to name a few. We managed to stretch our legs quite a bit and got to enjoy some pretty nice views.

Bastion Point was one of many fortified spots in and around Auckland.

Stairs up to Mt. Eden

Mission Bay

Considering this was early winter, it was a pretty nice day!