Auckland

Our travel from LAX to New Zealand lasted about 22 hours, including a 15 hour flight to Melbourne, Australia, a 90 minute layover, and a three hour flight to Auckland New Zealand. The long flight on V Australia was consumed by a combined six or seven movies and four meals between the two of us. We even got a little sleep.

Amidst a drizzle, we landed in Auckland, the most populous city in New Zealand with almost 1.4 million people, or more than 30% of the entire country's population. Coincidentally, we rented (or "hired" as they say) a Nissan Sunny to drive in the rain. At least the driver-side wiper mostly functioned--we fixed it two weeks into our trip and 6 hours into an 8 hour driving day in the rain. The drive to downtown on the left, correct side of the road was without event except for a car hydroplaning in across our lane just in front of us. Luckily, no crash followed.

After checking into our downtown hotel, a little walking exploration of Auckland reminded me of London with the combination of vaguely familiar shops, the accented English, and the wet diesel smell. The mild humidity was a pleasant reminder of summer for Emily, whereas I never like a sticky shirt. Auckland also has a surprisingly high density of Japanese and kebab restaurants, but Emily's sore throat convinced us to go for a safer smoothie and sandwich. After an episode of our new favorite TV show, Top Gear, we headed to bed.

Emily awoke ecstatic that she had a stuffed up nose. She took that as a sign that her sore throat was not strep and therefore did not require us to find a doctor on a Sunday and figure out how to obtain health care in New Zealand. The objective of Day 2 was acclimation: to the time and the driving. Our first step in acclimating was figuring out that New Zealand is only three hours behind (or actually 21 ahead) of California. I thought the difference would be much bigger, but I guess we spent most of our flight flying south instead of west. Daylight savings adjustment would expand that difference to four hours later in the trip, but a three hour difference was a pretty easy adjustment, especially after 24 hours of airports and airplanes.

We originally considered driving to a beach that first day, but the drizzle hung around, so we decided to walk through the city parks and enjoy the occasional sunshine. Families and grandma groups filled Albert and Cornwall parks, creating a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. We took a short drive to Cornwall park, parked, and opened our car door to a group singing "Do You Know the Way to San Jose." After wandering about the park, checking out some sheep, and enjoying some ice cream, we drove up a mountain called One Tree Hill. We encountered tight parking, nice views of the city, and unwelcoming gusts of wind. After returning to downtown, we spent the rest of our afternoon lounging in a cafe and playing board games. Well, it was actually a Starbucks, and we played games on an iPad, but relaxing at a coffee shop was something we hadn't really done since we started dating due to grad school. It felt a little foreign, but it felt like vacation. We headed to bed that night, feeling better adjusted and excited about our next day's adventure: glow worm caves.

Yes, the Nissan Sunny came with a dent in the right front bumper. Believe me, if I were going to hit something, it would have been on the left side of the car, which I had a harder time keeping track of.

Some cool trees at Albert park.

First sheep sighting in New Zealand! To our surprise, we probably saw more cow farms than sheep farms during the trip.

Cornwall park was pretty nice, especially once the sun came out.

The view of Auckland from One Tree Hill was pretty nice.

Oh HobNobs! This is the last picture of HobNobs you will see in this blog, I promise--unless I travel somewhere in the future and find them. So, last picture of HobNobs from New Zealand in March of 2011.