Auckland

We made it to Auckland without any issues; it's only an hour flight. We arrived on a Friday late afternoon. Ziad had booked a shuttle using his iPhone while we were hanging out at LAX at the start of this adventure that would take us from the airport to our hotel. We stayed at The Quadrant which is located only about 3-4 blocks away from downtown Auckland and its main shopping street, Queen Street. It's also across from the University of Auckland campus. The Quadrant is a chic, modern, funky hotel. Ziad got a smoking deal at this hotel. We checked in and head right back out again to start exploring. We walked around a little to get our bearings and found a little restaurant called The Middle East Cafe. We ended up having dinner there and it tasted really good and was reasonably priced. I liked it so much that I made sure we went back the next day to eat there again. Afterwards we walked around some more and found the Sky Tower. You can't miss this magnificent tower in Auckland's skyline. It's 328 metres tall and is the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere. You can actually see it from pretty much anywhere in Auckland, so it's a good landmark if you're ever unsure where downtown is in relation to where you are. It's big, it's concerte and I actually thought it was quite an eye-sore and that was its name for the rest of our time there. We didn't go up it because any time we gave it some thought it was overcast and we felt that would impact the view, so why spend the money? Ziad thought about bungy jumping from it, but it cost quite a bit even with the coupon we had and the weather never seemed right.

We did take in some live theatre that evening. Ziad found a play called "The Scene" while he was looking through one of the many brochures we got at the airport and thought it would be something we'd both enjoy. Was he ever right about that one. When we got to the theatre to buy tickets, we were told it was opening night so all tickets were sold out to mainly family, friends and famous people, but to come back about 15 minutes before the show started to see if there were any no-shows. So we did and ended up getting front row seats. The play was fabulous. It was very funny, entertaining and the acting was great. As for these famous people in attendance...I didn't recognize any of them.

First impressions of Auckland: definately a big city - I felt you needed to be more aware of your surroundings; very hilly - you can really get a workout walking around; city is quite young which can been seen through its architecture - quite modern, lacks character, has no rhyme or reason to styles. I also noticed that people seem to be allowed to drink on the streets in certain areas. That's a very foreign concept to me, but seems to be common in some cities around the world.