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Looking up at the Sky Tower
At 328m, the tallest tower in the Southern hemisphere, apparently (P) The weekend! Our housemates kindly took us on a picturesque drive to
Waiwera Thermal Baths for the afternoon, where they had a Movie Pool (mostly Disney) and several other outdoor pools with natural spring water up to 41 degrees! The setting was amidst hills of lush green trees and it was great to be swimming (okay, more bathing) in the outdoors.
We hit the town on our
first big Saturday night out in Auckland, starting at
The Drake, a 19th century pub formerly frequented by sailors since it used to sit right on the harbour. It is quite a tall, grand building, atop which is a great white cloth banner advertising in large letters simply “BEER”!
Nick was happy to try their wares, all under the
Monteiths brand, and was promised the gift of a beer glass on his next visit. Until the perfect jobs find us we are still living on a budget, so off we went in backpacking mode, checking out a few restaurants for the best value grub. We settled on a Japanese restaurant,
Saika, where we enjoyed a variety of dishes (all cooked, much to Nick’s delight) including lollipops made of
okonomiyaki (Japanese pizza/omelette) (have to
be seen to be believed)! There are a plethora of Japanese restaurants here, along with Korean and Chinese and Thai.
Post-eats, we headed to the
Shakespeare Tavern Brewery, offering a hardcore range of ales and stouts, some as strong as 11 percent! Asked “What do you usually like?” as soon as we entered, the barman keenly matched our usually tastes with what the in-house brewery had to offer: Falstaff Red Ale (4.5%!)(MISSING) full of a good hops flavour for Nick, and not far behind with Willpower Stout (4%!)(MISSING) was Paula. They were so friendly that soon we had so many samples of the full range lined up along the bar we had a job to keep up. They included the Regan’s Raspberry Weiss (4.3%!)(MISSING), Summer’s Day Bohemian Lager (5.5%!)(MISSING), Pistol’s Old Soldier (6.3%!)(MISSING), King Lear Old Ale (8%!)(MISSING) and Puck’s Pixillation
(11.1%!!(MISSING)!) I was unsurprised when I discovered they have accommodation upstairs!! Went in for one, emerged 4 (or was it 5?) later, Nick vowing that the establishment has confirmed its position on the Ale Trail for all who come to visit us.
On Sunday afternoon Nick triumphed with a
roast dinner which we polished off with much abandon. The
working week was filled with job applications and interviews, nicely broken up by a Spanish-themed evening at a city wine shop. Much fun (and paella) was had by all.
At the weekend, we had a successful duet of shopping experiences, firstly picking up a wok, an iron and a blanket for $12 from a garage sale (Less than a fiver, with a bog brush thrown in - actually, carefully placed in - for free). Later that day, we went to one of the many Asian supermarkets nearby and found a number of treasures: most importantly, some
Snow brand beer that we used to drink in China, and a Green Tea and Pomegranate squash that we loved in Thailand. Nick was also delighted to pick up some Taiwanese beer, and Paula was content with her Korean pickled cabbage (
Kimchi).
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Nick’s day out…Thursday 22nd May While Paula continued with her job applications, I decided to watch the European Cup Final and then have a grand day out. Night-time kick-off in England meant it started early morning in New Zealand. There was something odd about walking to a bar at dawn, half an hour’s walk away in the darkness, just
to watch a match between the same two English sides who had recently finished fighting it out for the Premier League title, particularly when I had wanted neither of them to win it. But football’s football.
Given the hour, I tried to order a coffee at the bar, but the machine was out of order. “Tea?” I enquired hopefully. Not available either. By this time, 11 pairs of eyes were watching, and their owners, nursing their pints, were wondering what my problem was. I settled on an orange juice and got a stool at the long counter. At half time, the food that had been stacked on the bar was no longer there. “What do you have for breakfast?” I asked the girl behind the bar. “Bacon roll” replied her manager, who’d overheard and who clearly had a surfeit of them from earlier, one tepid version of which I was duly served. The second half saw no further goals and the exciting match, which was concluded via a dramatic penalty shoot-out won by Manchester United, was witnessed not just by those inside but also by double the number on the pavement, peering through the open windows before they went
to work.
At 10h00, I emerged to glorious sunshine and so it remained all day. I walked 40 minutes into town, through the old
Symonds St cemetery, a large burial ground entombing people with very British surnames, almost all dated around the late 19th century. As Auckland developed, graveyard space was moved further out of town, but even this old one is bisected by 4-laned Upper Queen Street. I walked along
Karangahape (“K”) Road, a bohemian stretch of cafes and ethnic restaurants, and then into
Ponsonby, a fashionable suburb with smart places to do lunch and, of an evening, drink and dance. I myself snacked in Café Cezanne, which had the prestigious honour of being awarded the title of Auckland’s 2nd best café…in 2003 (it was indeed a nice toasted sandwich). During my walk, I called in music shops and booksellers, delis and an Italian bakery. Trendy Ponsonby has many more ways of sucking out your cash than where we live in Mt Roskill; but both areas have greenery in common - mature trees, gardens and parkland. I don’t know of any capital city that’s more verdant.
The Starbucks crews at their outlets around town were giving out
Ponsonby Road, Ponsonby
This is a typical Auckland street facade, quite British in style (from a few decades ago), and you can even see the National Bank in the distance with its Lloyds Bank-style green and black horse logo. samples of their Cinnamon and Cream coffees, which was great. I won’t spend any money in their places because of the
alleged way they do business, but I will take a small sip from their profits.
I walked another 2km and came to the foot of Auckland’s most iconic landmark, the 328m-tall
Sky Tower. Lonely Planet and the Sky Tower's own website claim that it’s the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere (can anyone disagree?). I watched a couple of folk make the 192m leap from the tower’s observation deck at 75kmh, before heading for a beer to bring a comfortable end to the afternoon. New Zealand is well-endowed in this respect, the mass-produced ales are good and the smaller-batch stuff is excellent.
>>>>>
A perusal of the local newspaper with accompanying bumph resulted in us following the advice of one advert to attend the Friday afternoon drinks tastings at our local
Liquorland (come on, it would have been rude not to). So we finished off this week’s job search with said outing; first on the cards was a recently launched bourbon and cola in a can (classy), then the Bishop’s Head collection (Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc and Reisling), coming from a
boutique (small) winery on the South Island. Coruba rum and ginger ale was next up (a pleasant enough combination but one has to be careful not to let the measure of ginger beer overpower the rum flavour). Lastly was the new Amstel and traditional Monteiths beer stand. It wasn’t all take though, the stand owners said it was really helpful to get such direct feedback (good and bad!) on their products. We eventually left the store (a little merrier than we’d arrived) at about 6 p.m. (!) having felt was a good idea to purchase 12 beers, one bottle of wine and a Coruba and cola (just to taste!). Roll on the first paycheck!
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