Advertisement
Published: August 8th 2010
Hey Everyone!!! I'm going to periodically update this travel blog over the next few weeks to keep you guys informed of my trip so far. This also means I won't be spending ridiculous amounts of money texting and calling you all. First things first - I've made it safe and sound to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time in my life! So exciting. The first few days have been pretty awesome....
Jess and I flew out of Vancouver Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. - as I was closing the bar Tuesday, I didn't finish until 1 a.m., and that combined with humidity and excitement, meant that sleep was impossible that night and as a consequence we ended up eating Indian food in my kitchen at 3 a.m. A great start! The flight to L.A. was uneventful - of course, the flight was full and I got stuck between an obese man and a New Age chick who needed to repeatedly centre her energies and pray to some obscure deity who noone has heard of but herself. Thank god that flight was only 3 hours! haha
We had a full day layover in L.A. - Jess planned it that way so we (she) could do some sightseeing. I've always hated L.A. - the smog, the traffic, the concrete, just the overall cliche that L.A. is - but luckily we managed to have a fun day bouncing around Hollywood, Wiltshire Dr, and Santa Monica. In particular, Santa Monica was great and we found a wicked Mexican fusion restaurant that had half price drinks that night, so we imbibed in a marg/mojito or 2 (or 8, really). We headed back to LAX after dinner and decided we needed to be drunk for our 13-hour all nighter flight (naturally - what better way to pass out on a flight) so we hit up a couple of the bars in the airport. Our flight was also delayed for an hour so just another hour to drink. We got on the flight at around 1 a.m., and of course, Air Qantas also served us some beer and wine with dinner once we finally boarded the flight (bless them). Of course a 13-hour overnighter in economy is anything but comfortable, so we thought being drunk and washing down a sleeping pill would be the key. NO! I couldn't get to sleep at all and tossed and turned for 8 hours and watched one awful movie (Hot Tub Time Machine) after another (so awful I can't even remember what it was). Finally got an hour or two of sleep as we crossed the Date Line and magically lost a day of our lives (it's Friday now? WTF!). But that tiredness didn't matter as we finally got our first glimpse of New Zealand at 8;30 local time!!
Auckland International Airport is gorgeous, peaceful, and welcoming - it's the exact antithesis of LAX. The people were all super friendly and helpful - which was awesome as Jess promptly lost and recovered her passport. My first impressions of Auckland were great. It's like a smaller Vancouver - super picturesque, green, friendly, clean, temperate, and extremely affluent. There's a bit of a reserved attitude in the city - it seems super British this way - although there are randomly some pretty racy billboards where a chick has a slice of a watermelon (with 2 of her fingers in it) covering where her...uhh...'hoo-haa' is (i'd love to hear a Kiwi say hoo-haa).
The architecure in Auckland is super random - there are a ton of beautiful grand old Colonial buildings in the Edwardian and Victorian styles side by side with huge new skyscrapers. The SkyTower in particular dominates everything else - its the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere, and I think it would be fun to jump off it (attached to a rope, of course). The University is a random mishmash of modernist, Victorian, and Soviet-style concrete blocks, but it does have one thing going for it - prime downtown location. The 'seedy' part of town - K Road - reminds me of a cleaner Granville St in Vancouver and is anything but sketchy. I discovered a series of alleyways and narrow streets (Vulcan Lane, High St, etc) just off the main drag that harbor cobblestoned lanes. It's gorgeous and reminiscent of something in Europe; full of funky designers and cool cafes, it was probably my favorite part of town. Our hostel is in a prime location, right on the main drag downtown (Queen St) and we're within a 5 min walk of everything we could ask for. Queen St itself is abuzz with people and has tons of great shops, but there's a curious lack of energy in the air. In fact, in the first couple hours we were here, I could totally see myself living in Auckland, but after a while there just seemed to be no soul to the city... I couldn't find it, anyways, and I quickly realized that as great as the city is, I'd soon grow tired and bored here.
More about the city - the bars are pretty hurting! There's lots of nice patios and places in Viaduct Harbour but everything just seemed so low-key. Even the 'wild and crazy' backpacker bars seemed to be anything but. Prices seemed super high at first, but there are no added taxes so that combined with the strength of our dollar means everything is actually probably cheaper for us. Transport is slow and inefficient, but man even the free buses around the city are FAR nicer than anything in Vancouver! And the main train station is spectacular, such a cool design. I had some of the best Indian food I've ever had in a little food court in a mall, how random is that? Auckland is quite multicultural, with huge Maori, Polynesian, and Asian populations. The Maori and Polynesians seem to be much like the Native people back home - beautiful people, but unfortunately, they are lowest on the socioeconomic ladder, have all the same problems, and represent the entire homeless population here (which is pretty low, to be fair). The climate is much like Vancouver in the winter, just a bit warmer. That same dampness is in the air, and the weather is so random (sunny one minute, then literally 3 minutes later a monsoon). I think Auckland would be stunningly beautiful in the snow, but apparently it's only snowed here once since records have been kept. It was weird getting used to it being winter here and having the sun go down at 5 pm.- I think that was the thing that confused me the most!
Biggest surprise - who knew shopping was so great here in NZ!!! It's killing me being a backpacker here and having only one bag. I bought a 100% merino wool top that's soooo nice, for less than 50 bucks (it would be 200-300 home) - thank you, NZ, for having so many sheep. Queen St has tons of fun shops, lots of the same ones we have at home but also local stuff. High St with all it's hidden alleys has awesome designer shops - and then, the outlet mall!! Who would have thought I'd find a Lacoste and Ben Sherman outlet in this city on the edge of the earth?! The entire mall had such awesome shopping and unlike Vancouver, things in my size dont' disappear within 5 minutes.
Best activity so far - a rugby match, the ultimate NZ experience!!! It was so fun, and my ticket came with 6 free beers (thanks to the hostel, haha). The NZ beer is not great, by the way - all so light and usually only 4%. They should definitely stick with making their awesome white wines. Anyways, the rugby was awesome and we need more of it back in Canada. The experience was fun and I'm definitely glad I saw it. A curious question though - apparently Auckland is the shittiest team in the league... how does BY FAR the biggest city in the country get beaten by the 10,000 population town up the road? Craziness... although....*cough*TORONTO MAPLELEAFS*cough*
Anyways... going to wrap up this blog here. I'm disappointed I didn't get to see more of NZ - especially Rotorua - but I'll definitely be coming back here. Off to Australia sometime tomorrow, so we're going to make the best of our last night here. If you need to contact me - it's best to get ahold of me by email or Facebook for now! Hope you're all well...and I'll talk to you all soon. xoxox
Mitch
Advertisement
Tot: 0.065s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0335s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
anonymous
non-member comment
AHHHHH your like just over there *Points to the east*