Arrival

So here I am, on the underbelly of the world. It took a 6-hour flight to San Fran, a 4-hour layover, and a 12-hour flight to Auckland, but at last I have arrived. It amazed me that I could just sit on a couple plane rides and all of a sudden be warped 9,000 some miles and into the heart of summer. The plane touched down at 4:30 am New Zealand time on Friday even though I left Wednesday - effectively skipping the first day of my life. And I can still hear the flight attendant's welcome in my head; "...and for those of you who are from this absolutely beautiful country, welcome home." That got me very excited and definitely made me forget that bumping in my stomach coming from the rigatoni with ricotta and some sort of weird meat sauce served earlier in the marathon flight.

After a short stint in the "biosecurity" line (which scares you a bit as they deem any sort of false statement regarding plants, food, random specks of dirt on your boots, etc. brought into their country as a fine of at least $200 and possibly imprisonment), I was on my way to an apartment of someone I had never previously met. For those of you that don't know, I did "couch surfing", which basically is like a Facebook-type website, but the profiles are used for people to determine whether they want to host people on their couch, spare room, etc. for a certain period of time. A kid named Hamish was gracious enough to let me crash at his place this weekend and even gave me his keys when he went to work today so that I could come and go as I pleased - talk about trusting a stranger. This sort of situation would never happen in New York.

Unsurprisingly, the first place that I somehow stumbled upon was the Auckland Domain, which is a massive arboretum-type area with a lot of gardens, trails, and the Auckland Museum. It reminded me a little of the Golden Gate Park, but much much smaller. Here are a couple pictures I took today of it. I especially like the one with the train as the old trains are a bit of throwback, ala Station Agent:

















After some time spent wandering around this area, I also visited the Parnell area. This small neighborhood east of the Domain was quaint and filled with really unique shops, restaurants, and coffee shops. One of the many interesting things I noticed in my first day was that no one jay-walks in Auckland and on occasion there are actually instances when both sides of the intersection are stopped and the pedestrians race by on all sides of the street and crossing at various diaganol paths. I then had a small lunch in the Grafton and checked out Auckland University's campus. It was really beautiful, small campus, with a lot of Victorian-style buildings, large quads, and their famous clock tower. Here are some pictures from that as well:




















The rest of the day was spent touring through some of the more touristy areas of Queen and Victoria Streets, walking along the wharfs, and ducking into a bar or two for some cold brewskies as it was about 80 degrees. Obviously these watering holes included a Belgian bar called Occidental and the Shakespeare Hotel & Brewpub (Auckland's first brewpub, which also has 13 rooms that are always booked).

So that is the update on Day 1. I'm finally going to hit the sack after what seems like ages since my head last hit the pillow. I'm going to be in Auckland the rest of the weekend and did (in case you were all worried) find a 24-hour bar (the Shakespeare one) that assured me they would have the Birds game on Monday morning at 9 am - giddy up.



Justin