But we managed to get ourselves and our bags downstairs by 6:00am. I was shocked to see that our ride to the airport was a personal tour bus. We had the whole thing to ourselves! It was... spacious.
It was also raining and cold in Auckland this morning. It seemed like we were getting out just in time, since the rain was supposed to settle in for the next few days.
Once we got to the airport it was indeed a blow to have to deal with all the hassles of flying commercially. As always my bag was 1kg overweight, but the person checking it in was nice and turned a blind eye. Our flight didn’t have a gate posted until about 20 minutes before it started boarding so we camped out on some chairs next to an incredibly over-priced bookstore.
The flight was uneventful. We had purchased tickets that were “The Works” so we got breakfast. Dad tried their hot breakfast of scrambled eggs, a rasher of bacon, and potatoes. I decided to play it safe and stuck with museli and a muffin. I discovered I actually like museli. It was like granola in really really light yogurt with raisins, fresh peach and maybe orange bits in it. It was actually pretty tasty.
I watched Super 8 after we took off. Dad and I had contemplated going to see this film earlier this summer, but we never ended up going. We should have! It was directed by J.J. Abrahms and I should have had more faith in him, given that I love his previous work. I would really like to see Super 8 again someplace where I can actually understand all the dialogue. The kids in the movie all gave great performances. Especially Elle Fanning!
I dozed for the last hour of the flight. It was weird how empty immigrations and customs were... there were no lines anywhere and I think once we’d gotten our bags we were out of there in a minute and a half.
We took a cab to our hotel in Coogee, which is where Pamela grew up! She’s already departed on her grand tour of Australia cruise so she can’t be here to show us around, but after Dad and I checked in to the hotel, we slathered on the sunscreen and went to take a walk along the beach.
It turned out to be a really scenic walk. There were huge waves coming in at the beach, and we climbed up to one of the coastal cliffs and clambered over rock formations. We returned to the waterfront for lunch. After a bit of wandering we ended up the Coogee Hotel’s brasserie/beer garden. Dad and I shared a Caesar salad and a cheese burger. One of the normal ingredients on burgers here is tomato relish. It was okay, but not as good as Fergburger!
After lunch we got brave and went over to the beach, despite all the things that can kill you. We took our socks and shoes off and (avoiding anything that looked remotely like a shell - stinging shells, look it up) went and stuck our toes in the water, or in my case since a wave twice as strong as all the others snuck up on me, up to my calves, splashing all over. It was cold (Dad hammed for the camera)!
We stayed for a little while, watching some boys trying to body surf on the large waves. Dad saw one really stupid person narrowly avoid getting smashed on the rocks, but since we saw his head bobbing after a few minutes, we figured he hadn’t actually managed to drown himself.
After about twenty minutes we decided to quit while we were ahead and nothing had bitten/stung/or poisoned us. We went back to the hotel for the afternoon and chilled.
For dinner we went to a restaurant called Ceviche that was diagonally across the intersection from the hotel. There was a private function going on inside the restaurant but they sat us on the balcony. The evening was quite mild and with the heater taking off the chill it was lovely.
I had gnocchi that was edible, tasty even! It was unusual, it was very large, about as long as my hand and had been stuffed with ricotta, spinach, and walnuts, and was served with a pesto sauce. Dad had tuna tartar. For our mains we both had fish, his was barimundi and mine was ocean trout served with wasabi mashed potatoes. It was a lovely evening and a great way to end the trip.
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