Kia Ora New Zealand!

Sometimes at the convergence of perfect timing and good luck, a trip comes together even better than you'd planned, So begins the story of our trip to New Zealand. I hadn't had much time to blog lately mostly because every spare moment trying to fit as much of the country into a 10 short day itinerary as was humanly possible. I read through the better part of four guide books, and spent lots of time reading internet guides too, and finally settled on a wildly busy itinerary that would carry us all the way from the Bay of Islands to Milford sound. The trip started with a difficult decision, Should we A. Spend a little extra money flying directly to Auckland and possibly have to fly coach on Air New Zealand, or B. Fly to Sydney on W's employer, and then fly to Auckland giving up the better part of a whole day of the trip in transit, but most likely sitting in First class for the longest part of the trip. We chose option A, and through a little bit of magic ended up in ANZ's Business Class. First let me just say even if we'd paid full fare for a B-class seat it would have been worth it. W didn't know what wine to order with dinner, so the flight attendant sets down 4 glasses of wine on a napkin with the type of wine written below each glass.

The flight is manned by a concierge, who pulled location guides out of thin air and recommended sights to see and places to stay. A full wine guide comes with your menu, and they served the most delicious panna-cotta for dessert, with an absolutely amazing NZ dessert wine. The trip was getting off to a great start We decided at that point to skip the trip north to Bay of Islands, we'll just have to make it the first item on the itinerary next time. We made our first visit to a NZ i-site, where the guy there found us a room and was pretty helpful despite what seemed like a case of tourette's. Next we picked up our car at Apex where we got a great deal on a car that included insurance, roadside assistance, and a GPS. Our car served many purposes, camera stand, locker, picnic table,heater, refrigerator, and the list goes on and on. It was badly underpowered, didn't like going uphill very much and had the worst wiper blades I've ever seen, but got us everywhere we needed to go safely. We spent some time driving around in circles, because the GPS wasn't always perfect with street addresses, and the hotel was in a weird alley. We got W a little nap while I went out and wandered around the hotel to discover what was nearby and scout possible dinner locations. I found a little side street with some pubs and restaurants, and walked a few blocks down to the harbour. I came back and discovered my new favorite cafe for the trip, muffin break.

They have above average coffee, and really tasty muffins and sandwiches, and a guy working the counter who knew almost everyone by name. I gathered up a somewhat refreshed W, and we walked up to the sky tower (with a short stop at a kebab shop) to catch the bus to Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World. Most of the attraction here revolves around taking the snow cat around to see the penguins, which was actually really cool, but for us, we were lucky enough to show up on a Thursday to see shark, fish and sting ray feeding. We were finally ready for some food, so we paid a visit to the Queensferry Hotel. We ordered some potato wedges with cheese and sour cream and bacon that came with a delicious chili sauce. I learned to love a beer called montieth's radler. Then we went off to check out the Auckland Sky tower. You can pay an extra three $NZ for access to the upper upper deck, and it's totally worth it, at eight o'clock at night we had the whole thing to ourselves. The views from the tower are incredible, if not a little dizzying and then we took a few minutes to play the slots to see if we could win ourselves a nicer vacation. Needless to say we did not, but that doesn't mean we didn't enjoy ourselves. We grabbed some dinner at the Sushi Factory that we found quite delicious but gave us our first bit of restaurant sticker shock, although their green tea ice cream was very tasty. Then we settled back in at the our hotel, the City Life Auckland. It was a touch pricey, but was neither the best or worst value for the trip.