Auckland Day 2

Aotea Square

The weather here is like nothing I’ve experienced before. We joke in Calgary that if you don’t like the weather wait 10 minutes and it will change but that is absolutely true of what we’ve experienced so far. One minute the sky will be blue and the sun will be shining. The next minute it will be raining sideways, then back to blue skies. It’s as if someone threw a switch. Note to self: don’t go out without your rain jacket and brollie no matter what it looks like outside!

We seem to be in a pretty classy part of town if the shops are anything to go by,
Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci among them. We did some shopping today but not at any of those stores. Mind you, we also saw Burger King, Wendy’s, and MacDonald’s within walking distance of the hotel so maybe eclectic might be a better word. R now has a rain jacket that doesn’t leak and wool ‘beanie' that is small enough to roll up and put into a pocket.

We had lunch at a small café in an old theatre building.  We were searching for tickets to a Beethoven concert, but when we got talking to the woman in the café we decided to go and see School of Rock by Andrew Lloyd Weber instead. We never seem to make the effort to get out and see things like this at home. In fact, I think the last time we saw live theatre was in New York 4 or 5 years ago. Interesting considering that, for years, we had season tickets.

Showtime was 6:30 and we decided to have supper after the show. We had some time so we went up the Sky Tower and had a look at the city from above. The Sky Tower is slightly higher than the Calgary Tower and for those truly foolhardy souls it’s possible to bungee jump from the tower. It’s not the kind of jump where you bounce. This one had cables on either side and as the person fell the cables guided him in towards the base of the tower where there was a landing pad. In the time we were up the tower we only saw one guy jump. We got chatting to one of the guys who worked there and he said he had jumped a number of times. He also told us there is an outside walkway that you can take. I don’t think it was open today because of the wind and rain. I was perfectly happy to observe from the inside anyway. There are several places where there are glass panels in the floor so you can look right down.  I guess they must get a lot of questions about the glass because there are signs saying that the glass is 38mm thick and is just as strong as the concrete in the rest of the floor. There is also a glass panel in the elevator floor.  Going up it wasn’t that spectacular but coming down looked like some kind of computer graphics with the steel beams of the housing rushing by.

Ferry terminal

We still had some time before the show when we came down from the tower, so we walked over to the ferry terminals at the harbour. There is an impressive  network of ferries and I think we’ll be on some of them once the tour starts. The harbour seems quite extensive and a woman we chatted with while up the tower pointed out to us where the America’s Cup yacht race takes place. She told us the NZ boat had just been unveiled today but wasn’t sure exactly where it was docked.  She also pointed out a number of volcanic cones around the city. One of the most enjoyable things about travelling is the interesting people you meet.

School of Rock was an enjoyable romp. Some of the characters were pretty stereotypical and the story was predictable, good fun nonetheless. It was, however, a very long show. We thought that we’d probably be out by 8:00. The intermission fell at 8:00.  I didn’t see what time the curtain came down but we were looking for someplace to eat at about 9:15. We really didn’t want MacDonalds.  There is a place across the street from the hotel called Burger Fuel and it was still open so that’s where we went for dinner. Interestingly enough, two of the characters in the show talked about going out to Burger Fuel for their anniversary dinner. It wouldn’t have been my choice for an anniversary dinner but the burgers were very good and we were quite hungry.

Find the sparrow

I’ve been on the lookout for birds, of course, and haven’t seen any unusual ones yet. There are lots of pigeons and house sparrows and a couple of different kinds of gulls. The sparrows seem to be particularly fearless.  One little guy came into the café where we had lunch. We asked if he was a regular and the woman behind the counter said that he usually came in a couple of times a day and made the rounds of the floor before going back outside. He clearly knew the difference between the windows and the door.  When I tried to get a bit closer to him to take a photo he flew past me straight for the door. He returned a few minutes later and I managed to get a picture, although I didn’t get very close.

We aren’t sure what we’ll be up to tomorrow. We are to meet up with the tour group for supper tomorrow night. Beyond that we’ll just see what intrigues us now that we are starting to learn our way around this particular part of downtown. Stay tuned.