Getting Acclimated in Auckland (December 28)

Though we took off on Monday night, we landed at 5:30 Wednesday morning — three hours behind but a full day ahead of CA time.  We got our car with no problem and drove directly to our hotel near the harbor in Auckland, with the girls applauding each time Jim made a turn into the correct (left) lane. I'm normally the driver in the family because of my deaf ear, but in this country, we were able to keep the same configuration but have Jim drive (which works because I've always been scared to drive on the left).

It was far too early to check into our room, so we left our suitcases at the hotel and spent the morning walking around the city. We thought the city was empty because it was so early, but we hadn’t really realized (though we had heard) how closed down the country is between Christmas and New Year.  The breakfast place Julia had found was closed for the Christmas holiday so we went to Remedy Coffee for a delicious meal. 

We followed a walking tour from the Lonely Planet that took us all over the downtown area, up Queen Street, through parks, and right by the Auckland Art Museum, which was having a special Diego Rivera/Frida Kahlo exhibit that was quite good. We also really enjoyed the art of Robin Wright, a New Zealand artist.

We continued to the end of the tour back by the harbor and had lunch at The Conservatory, a place with lovely outdoor seating on a pedestrian street.  At first, the owner didn’t want to serve us saying that the food would take a long time to come out since two of their chefs called in sick, but it was so lovely to sit out by the water in the shade and play cards that we didn’t mind. And, the food actually came much more quickly than he feared.

My idea had been that we’d take a ferry to Waiheke Island for an afternoon of bike riding, etc., but the line to get on the ferry was two hours long, and we didn’t want it that badly.  Instead, we checked into our swanky hotel at 3 pm and took showers while Jim went to get a haircut. We then drove to the Devonport area, a 12-minute ferry ride, but a 20 minute drive.  We got gelato and walked through the town, getting a sense of Auckland from across the water.

As we usually do, we decided to check out the grocery store and I said to Rachel that we should put together a bunch of snacks to send back to Vassar with her and a guy standing right in front of me turned around and said, “Vassar???” Turns out his daughter is also a junior at Vassar from Palo Alto High School — and there we were in the same aisle of a grocery story on the other side of the world.  Weird.

Jetlag was starting to set in, but we wanted to get to one of the notable views of the city from the volcanic peaks.  We drove over to One Tree Hill and parked (near some sheep which Allyson asked for pictures of) with still quite a long walk ahead up super steep pathways to get to the obelisk, a memorial to Māori. 

It was 8:30 pm by the time we were finished; we ordered Indian food from 3 Nutmegs to take back to our hotel where we watched (me, not really) Hobbit #2 movie and went to bed.