Last few hours

We had about half a day in Auckland before we needed to head to the airport for the journey back to YVR. It was June 1st, and the Queen's (Victoria) birthday in New Zealand, which makes it a statutory holiday. We found out at breakfast that on statutory holidays, you get charged a 15% surcharge on anything you buy. That was new to us, but thankfully our breakfast spot wasn't charging it. We had breakfast at a restaurant near the hotel called Invito. I had French crepes with blueberries and Ziad had scrambled eggs, streaky bacon and toast. The bacon down there is more like Canadian back bacon, so like a little piece of ham, but streaky bacon is more like the regular bacon we have up here. The things you learn travelling or reading a blog. And of course, don't even ask, we both had a flat white coffee. They would generally decorate it with the Kiwi national tree, the silver fern. We still had one Esquires coupon left, so after breakfast we went and had another flat white. On a great caffeine high we walked around Auckland, through a shopping/cafe district known as Parnell on our way to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. It was a wonderful sunny, but windy day. We made it to the museum and spent about an hour there going through its many exhibits. It's an interesting museum and deplicts the many wars New Zealand has been involved in. There is a "suggested" $5 donation at the door. The museum was built on a volcanic fault, which is kinda freaky if you really think about it. It is located on a hill and has a great view of the city. It was a great place to visit with the time we had left.

Our walk back to the hotel took us through a nice tree-filled park, but I can't remember its name, and the campus of the University of Auckland. We had $14 kiwi dollars left and wanted to find something to spend this on because we really didn't want to bring this back. Ziad spotted a take-away place called Corner Pancake. It was a little place that sold pancakes that were stuffed with various things like ham and cheese, beef, brown sugar and peanuts. Ziad thought this was the coolest thing ever and there were a bunch of people standing by it waiting for their pancakes, which is always a good sign. So for $2 Ziad got the sweet pancake (brown sugar and peanuts). I wasn't sure about this, but after trying a bite, I'll admit it was quite good.

Off to the airport we went to head back to reality. Our flight back left at 7:30pm Kiwi time Monday June 1st and we arrived back in Vancouver at 9:10pm Pacific time Monday June 1st. I guess I found that day I lost along the way.