Tuesday 4th October 2011
Tom had one of his rare urges to go shopping on Tuesday, so
off we popped to the local designer outlet. A few T shirts later we trundled
into Ponsonby Road to meet Rachael, who was having her first day off after a
very long and stressful stretch of working. She has a proper job as a
consultant in the liver transplant unit here.
The four of us had a lovely lunch in a restaurant called
Andiamo, where Sarah knows the chef. From there we went to see Rachael and
Dave’s new (ish ) house, which has a pool and views over Auckland. As this was
the first day with good weather, we really started to get a sense of why people
say this city is so beautiful.
We were to meet another Dave, who has kindly organised for
us to stay in his friend’s house in Wellington at the weekend, so we went to
the Flying Moa for drinks with Sarah’s colleagues and the pub quiz. Despite being a little tired and emotional, we
managed to come 6th out of 20 teams (and would have done better if I
had listened to Tom that the answer to the bonus question was Portugal....).
Wednesday 5th October 2011
The plan was to move to Rachael and Dave’s house for a
couple of days prior to heading off for more rugby at the weekend. Rach came to
pick us up and we all went for a 5k run along the waterfront. I then braved the
icy waters of Rachael’s pool. It was colder than the sea off Whitby on an April
day but I managed three lengths before giving up.
We took a taxi into town and looked for a nice place to have
lunch outside. We found a bar called The Northern Steamship Bar which looked
pretty ordinary from the outside but inside was a delight of quirky design
From there we went next door to the Tyler Street Garage
which used to be, err, a garage, and had
lunch. Dave joined us and we sat outside overlooking the harbour and the fanzone.
Afterwards we went to see an exhibition of international
press photography, a humbling collection of pictures from around the globe
which served to remind us how lucky and privileged we are to have been born in
a country with a reasonably functioning legal system and a lack of natural
disasters. Oh, and there were pictures of Bolivian granny wrestling too.
We went from there to the bar at the Hilton hotel, which
looks out over the harbour, and watched the Wednesday races – catamarans and
yachts racing across the harbour.
Sarah joined us for a pizza at SPQR on Ponsonby Road and
that was that for Wednesday.
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