Downtown Auckland


Advertisement
New Zealand's flag
Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Auckland
January 7th 2014
Published: January 8th 2014
Edit Blog Post

The bus was late coming into Auckland, of course, so Ben and Michelle had started to worry that something had gone wrong. But, soon enough I had collected my backpack and thrown myself into the back of the car. It was evening, around 8:30pm, but the sun was still up as we drove to their place. On the way there, they stopped and picked up some fish and chips from a takeaway (to-go) place, because I had not yet tried that New Zealand delicacy. We snacked on the fried fish and chips (fries) at their place, augmenting the delicious with tomato sauce (like ketchup but thinner, sweeter, and with a slightly different flavor. Maybe coconut? Or molasses? I don't know.) and aioli. After that it was time for bed, since we had an early morning the next morning.



Ben and Michelle needed to leave early in the morning for Palmerston North (like 7am), and they dropped me off at the bus stop on the way out of Auckland. I then bussed to downtown Auckland so I could see a little of it before bussing to the airport. I was pretty tired, though, and had my backpack in tow, so I ended up walking around only a little. I sized up the Skytower from a distance, but didn't feel like walking over to see it, so I only tooled around a little on the waterfront.



Downtown Auckland is a port city, with cruises and container ships and ferries and all sorts of people coming and going. There's a maritime museum right on the harbor that boasts some of their racing boats, the Skytower (of course), many cafes and restaurants, a bus depot, and they also have shipping containers decorated around the wharf that have been repurposed as info exhibits, decorative murals, even one that was converted into a library, complete with layback chairs on a bit of astroturf out front. That one was really cool.



After wandering around a little, I stopped my a cafe to get a long black (Americano, basically. It was actually quite good.). As I was sipping my coffee and staring out the window, trying to become less zombie and more human, people came into the cafe and I heard a friendly accented voice ask "penny for your thoughts? You seem very far away!" I smiled and started chatted with the friendly elderly man and his wife, two Australians who were passengers on the huge cruise ship that had docked in the harbor for a bit. Turns out the man (I never got his name) was a construction engineer, so we had a friendly conversation about the benefits of concrete and how fulfilling it was to be a construction engineer because you get to see things that you helped construct. It was very pleasant, and to my everlasting delight, he thanked me at the end of the conversation, saying that he had enjoyed talking to me, that it had been very pleasant, and that "you have added something to my life that wasn't there 15 minutes ago." Wow. To think that I could make someone's day brighter just by chatting -- I was immensely flattered.



I eventually left the cafe, then did a bit of writing on some cushiony couches outside of a closed waterfront restaurant. They opened at 11am and kicked me out (politely, of course) so I then dozed under an umbrella on one of those container-astroturf numbers I told you about, and finally decided to bite the bullet and hopped on the bus to the airport. Then it was the usual checking-in of luggage,passing through security screening, and waiting for the flight. I was bummed to see that this plane did not let you select movies -- they only showed a set number on different channels but on repeat, so you couldn't start one whenever you wanted. BUT I swiped a whole row of three chairs for myself for the flight to Tahiti, so that made up for it. I just read the Crystal Singer ebooks on my iPad the whole time. :D



In Tahiti I found my usual spot by the windows-that-open on the abandoned second floor and hung out. Then it was back on the second flight for the 8-hour flight to LAX. I slept for some of that flight, but not as much as I wanted. 😞 Customs took about an hour to clear -- you'd think LAX would have figured out by now that they have a lot of people to get through, but I guess they don't really care. Who knows? I've now whiled away almost all of my 12-hour layover in LAX, burning probably $20 USD on food from boredom and having a nice chat with a retired operating room nurse at the charging station. Ah! My flight is now boarding! Hooray!



Sigh, almost home.

Advertisement



Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 13; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0437s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb