Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

September 30th - October 3rd

AUCKLAND

On Friday morning, Nikki left Scott (and Bertie) in Hamilton and took a bus up to Auckland for the weekend to meet up with Claire, a co-worker and friend from Calgary, who had arrived in Auckland that same morning. Since Scott is nearing the end of the semester and is bombarded with assignments that are all due in the coming week, we decided it was a good opportunity for a little girl time.

I met up with Claire at Queenstreet Backpackers. When we went to check in, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that we had been booked into a twin room instead of the quad share room. We were really happy to have our own space and room for the weekend. It was a pretty nice hostel right in the middle of downtown, which made it easy and convenient to get around from here.

We spent the morning chatting and catching up on all the details and events from the last 3 months (OK... I will admit it... she caught me up on all the gossip).

Then we grabbed some lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant (Mmmm... mussels and salmon pasta) where the chatting/gossiping continued for a couple hours.  We walked around downtown for a bit, checked out the Sky Tower and waited to see someone jump from it. Claire planned on doing the jump at some point this weekend, but wasn't feeling it today because she was so tired and feeling icky from jet-lag. Plus... she was a tad nervous and needed some more time to work up the courage.

Maybe tomorrow.

At about 4pm, we made our way over to the Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium.

First we went to the Antarctic Encounter, where we boarded a snowcat which took us through the freezing cold home of a colony of 80 penguins. Brrrr!

Then we went through the shark tank. Literally... walked right through it.

Duunn Dun. Duuun dun. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun BOM BOM!

 

And then we saw lots and lots of other fish and other marine life.

Crabs and an octopus.

 Nemo and Dory together!

And lots of different species of seahorses and much much more.

View of downtown Auckland from outside the aquarium.

On our way back downtown, I almost lost Claire. Not in like a `I can`t find her lost` way, but more of a `Passed out sleeping lost` kinda way. haha. When we got back downtown, she was tempted to make her way to bed, but she decided to fight it. She got a diet coke and kept on trucking. She got her second wind just in time to go out for dinner at a place nearby our hostel called Fort Street Union.

She forced herself to stay awake and actually made it until about 10:30pm. And then she passed right out while Nikki struggled to get to sleep with all the noise (I guess this is a downfall to staying in a hostel right in the middle of downtown). It was pretty loud, but I managed to get some sleep in between loud moments. Like at 4:30am when they apparently clean the streets and dispose of all the empty beer bottles from all the bars. UGH!

We woke up the next morning feeling great and a little less jet-lagged on Claire`s part. It was a little overcast and windy out, so we decided to wait off on the Sky Jump for now and see what the weather does later in the day. Instead, we basically did a walking tour of the entire Downtown area, Ponsonby Road, K-road, and finished off with the RWC Fan Trail.

We started out by walking along the harbour. We made our way past Queens Wharf, which was filled with rugby fans and festivities. We past the ferry docks and Princes Wharf and then made our way across the foot bridge over the Viaduct Harbour. There we jumped on a cute little trolley which took us around a few blocks and gave us a little history of the area.

Then we made our way to Victoria Park. Normally there is a really great market here, but it is closed for renovations right now. Boo!



Sculptures by John Radford in Western Park



Then we jumped on a bus which dropped us off at the start of Ponsonby Road, which is an area known as 'Auckland`s Hippest Strip'. It was full of neat little shops, cafes, restaurants and parks.

We thought we were in luck when we found the Ponsonby Meat Market. Just what we were looking for (for Claire... of course). And it's not just any ordinary meat market... it's a Superior one!

But... she was disappointed to find out it wasn't THAT kind of meat market.

We continued walking until it met up with K-road, which also has lots of little shops and cafes, but isn't quite as nice of an area. We walked along there until it met up with the RWC Fan Trail, which cut down through a park and had lots of neat little artsy displays along the way.

We were walking the wrong way along the Fan Trail (heading back downtown instead of towards the stadium), so we passed lots of English and Scottish people as they were heading to the game.

Probably some of the best decorated fans of the weekend.

Tracing our path now on google, I figure we walked about 8km and saw most of Auckland's downtown core. After making it back to our hostel and having a little stretch break, we made our way to Huma no Yume restaurant for a sushi dinner! It was fairly good, but ended off on a weird note with a tuna roll that was not as we expected. It was a typical sushi roll but was filled with what tasted like canned flaked tuna. Ewww!

View of the Sky Tower at night from the restaurant.

After dinner we headed out to a pub to check out what was left of the England vs Scotland rugby game. Claire of course was cheering for England, but I was cheering for Scotland, who were ahead in the game until near the end when England made a come back to win. We spent the rest of the night hanging out with a bunch of English and Scottish rugby fans.

The next day we had a pretty relaxed morning in anticipation of the upcoming rugby game. We got all decked out in our red and white Canada gear and headed out to watch the All Blacks play Canada.

We headed down to the Fan Zone on Queens Wharf where they had big tents set up and lots of big screens where fans could watch the game. We were surprised to see there were actually a few other Canadians in the sea of All Blacks fans.

Then we witnessed Canada get destroyed by the All Blacks. It was painful but we were glad to see they were at least able to get 2 tries, making the final score 79-15.

We grabbed some delicious lamb burgers for dinner, and then headed back to the Fan Zone to check out what was going on. The Ireland vs Italy game was up next. Before the game there was an Irish band performing live. They were actually pretty good, and it seemed like all the people dressed in green were enjoying it too. We hung out here until we were ready to head to bed.

Since the weather didn't really clear up at all that day, we went to bed hoping for better weather in the morning so Claire could do the Sky Jump. But we were disappointed to wake up to an even more overcast, windy day.

 

Sky Tower covered in misty clouds on Monday morning.

We decided to go check it out anyways, and sure enough, they were on standby until the weather cleared up. Since we were both leaving Auckland in only a couple hours, she couldn't do it. 

I'm sure she will make up for it this week with other crazy scary things like the canyon swinging and skydiving in Queenstown!

We said our goodbyes later that morning as I jumped on a bus back to Hamilton, and Claire jumped on the shuttle to the airport to start off her week of South Island adventuring. She will be coming back up to Hamilton in a week for some more North Island adventuring.