Arrival in Auckland after a 3 hour flight from Brisbane, which went nice and quick with enough time for a film and breakfast, is ideal! Eventually got through customs with one of the control desk men asking if we were sisters - i liked him but i don't think Becky did! We emerged into a scruffy looking airport arrivals where we queued at the information desk to check which bus we needed to catch. The Asian girl gave us a few clues, the bits I could understand (not her fault, mine for not speaking Asian) led us at least in the right direction and we saw a bus which looked like one she'd said about so we queued and asked the driver who told us we needed the next one! We got on the next one where the nice little hobbit driver told us that we needed to get off at stop 1, not the first stop so after $32 and about half an hour, we were told stop 1 was coming up. We got off and walked to the Langham Hotel, just a couple of minutes away. What was going wrong, things were going right? Well, when we walked in we thought we were in the wrong place as it was like being back in Vegas with the large entrance hall and central statue, only it was much nicer! There's definitely something to be said for a 5 star hotel and that is - oohhh, it's lovely!
Settling into our lovely room made us wonder whether we should just stay and enjoy or perhaps get out to see a bit of Auckland - we settled for the latter so went for a walk which seemed to be all downhill, through an area with many young backpackers from just about every country, just as there had been on the airport bus! We decided not to stop at the first few eating places as they were mainly Asian and we've still got that to come on the trip so continued to walk on down towards the harbour, giving us a chance to see where we have to go to catch our Scenic Railway Train to Wellington on Saturday morning. We found the station and decided it was probably a bit far to walk dragging our cases behind us, a taxi might be a good idea.
We got right down to the harbour and still hadn't found a place that looked good and reasonable so we walked along the quayside. Surely there'd be somewhere to eat, how come we always go the wrong way and miss all the decent restaurants and find the rubbish cheap and nasty ones! It paid off to keep walking, as Becky had wanted to. If it had been me and John we'd have turned round and gone back and missed out on the nice bars and restaurants around the Marina at the end of the Quay that we eventually found. We managed to get a table and had a good meal, Becky with her beer and me with an orange juice which went down pretty quick so I thought I should have a glass of wine to go with the meal. Haha Becky, jokes on you - she's still drinking her beer!
We decide to head back to the hotel and buy a bottle of wine on the way, it sounds like we're a couple of alcoholics but its not that bad, yet! Sadly, we find that having made our way down to the harbour, we have to make our way up to the hotel and its quite a climb. Fortunately, we find a little kiosk selling Churros and get a large one filled with chocolate sauce between us and that makes it all worthwhile. Churro demolished in minutes over the next block, we then see a Bottle Shop and chance a look in for a bottle of wine. It doesn't take us long to find the cheaper bottles at the back and we pick up one with a lovely looking label - called 'Fat Bird' and yes, it had a fat bird on it - well that was good enough for this fat bird, not sure about Becky but we couldn't see one called 'Skinny Bird'! Back to our lovely hotel room and crash out after a glass (yes glass, this hotel room has proper wine glasses in it, no using the toothpaste glasses from the bathroom!) of lovely wine - the old 'go by the label' theory works again!
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