Thursday, August 30, 2007

the Southern Hemisphere...

We just went to Auckland via KL two weeks ago. There are no direct flights from Colombo to NZ or Australia for that matter, so we had the option of breaking our journey in one of the SE Asian countries... On the way there we had a 10 hour lay-over at KL, but were put up at the airport hotel, that turned out to be surprisingly comfortable (The Pan-Pacific at KLIA). The flight from KL to Auckland was our longest every with Ayushi, and it went surprisingly well, with her taking naps of up to 2 hours, and only being awake for about an hour and a half in between, I think she slept quite well cos it was a night flight.

We arrived in Auckland to some typical British weather of grey clouds and grey everything, and were quite cold! The appart-hotel we were staying at was also pretty cold until we got the heaters switched on... it remained wet and grey for the first 2 days, which reminded us why we'd left London in the first place! We're just not winter destination people, or if we are, we just still need our RDA of sunshine! We spent our first day walking down Queen Street, which is Auckland's version of Oxford street, which was actually a bit more like the high street in Cardiff, rather than London, and not that impressive for shopping compared to any of the major cities in the world... In the evening, we decided to go to Ponsonby, which is meant to be the hip and buzzing area of the city... there were a number of interesting looking restaurants, but being a Saturday night, we weren't able to get a seat in any of the ones we were really interested in, and it was a bit chilly to sit al fresco, especially with the baby... so we had to settle for takeout.

Our third day finally there was some sunshine! so we decided to walk through Auckland's Domain Park, which is the city's oldest park, developed around the cone of an extinct volcano. The park was pretty, with a duck pond, beautiful gardens, mature trees, and the Auckland War Memorial Museum, which stands at the Domain's highest point... after a quick stop at the duck pond for Ayushi, we walked onto Parnell, which is the quaint colonial style area of Auckland, with some of the best dining options.


We stumbled upon
Iguacu (pronounced Ig-wa-soo), which was having a Sunday Jazz brunch, with a live band, and singer. The food was excellent, and the high glass roof made it feel really light and area. It was also great place to dine with a baby, as the staff were friendly, and there were plenty of other families dining.


After lunch, we went for a spot of shopping in Newmarket, which is their main shopping area, again, its not really worth a stop if you're used to London or any other large city, but I did manage to get Ayushi some Pumpkin Patch clothing...which is a NZ brand kids clothing company, and its always nice to get different stuff from the usual clothes we buy.
In the evening we were joined by Bush for dinner, we drove down to the Harbour and had another great meal at the Harbourside Seafood Bar & Grill...I stuck to the seafood, which was great, the boys had Lamb (this was to be a feature of our trip...since everyone was determined to have as much of the famous NZ lamb as possible), and I must say, it was pretty scrumptious!

The rest of our week was pretty jam-packed with Bush's pre-engagement and engagement celebrations in the evening, but we managed to make the most of our time there, by still doing some sight-seeing in the day time.


Including: Mt Eden (Maungawhau)
- an extinct volcanic crater which has magnificent views of the city:


Mission Bay, which has a man-made beach, and many quaint sea-side cafe's serving up fish'n'chips. and a day trip to Waiheke Island, where we were able to savour some great food and wine at their newest vineyard (which was set up at a staggering cost of $5mn, but not surprising when we found out that one of the 5 investors was no less than the original 007 (and the best one according to me...) Mr Sean Connery...), Cable Bay the views were magnificent, you could look across the sea to Auckland's sklyline... after the lunch, M had the great idea to walk to the next vineyard Mudbrick (which with 9 adults and two babies on pushchairs... took well over half an hour, but again, the views were great... would definitely visit Waiheke Island again to sample the wines!

Our trip ended all too soon, and we were on our flight back to KL, which was even longer than the one there at 11+ hours, this time we were not so lucky, and Ayushi only managed to sleep for about 3 hours in total, which meant we had to keep her entertained for the rest of the flight so we arrived in KL quite shattered... but were happy to have a luxurious 7ft bed after the barely double bed we'd had in NZ!

Monday, August 06, 2007