New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 10 (Well That Was Easy)

I had to get up early to get the airport bus by 7am. The next flight was with Air New Zealand (they make a profit unlike Qantas) down to Wellington. The best part of the one hour flight was their safety video, which was funny and really well produced, and is available on YouTube. A runner up was the free drink and cookie, even for such a short flight. The worst part (if you could call it that) was that it only took like ten minutes to check-in and get to the departure gate, leaving more than an hour of time to waste (sleep).

At Wellington it was on to another airport bus. This one was just a normal domestic bus that just happens to go via the airport, which meant they had to be a bit creative to get all of the luggage loaded in - basically they just piled them up around and on top of the seats at the front, many of the smaller suitcases then became airborne when we took tight corners. To get to the downtown area of Wellington the bus also goes through this weird one way tunnel underneath Mount Victoria. I managed to get off the bus at just the right spot and was able to check-in to a room at the hotel by 1pm, a couple of hours earlier than I expected.

After getting a quick lunch along Lambton Quay and passing by the Parliament buildings we reached the Wellington train station. Since I had a bit of extra time I figured I might as well take a quick train trip out to Takapu Road where they have a small Dress Smart outlet shopping mall. I had quite low expectations for this since there was only thirty stores in total, but there was a few sports stores in the list and the express train only took about ten minutes each way. On the train they actually had ticket inspectors walking through the train punching tickets, but even more surprising was that you could actually board the train without a ticket and buy one off them as they came around.

Cenotaph, fancy word for a war memorial.

After getting to the outlet mall I found out that my low expectations still weren't low enough, the selections were poor and the prices weren't much different to what I'd already come across in the cities. The highlight of the trip instead was the bucket tree outside a motel next to the station. There was a massive Countdown supermarket near the station as well, which seemed oddly placed as there wasn't really anything else around except a freeway. This time I chose a Lift Plus energy drink which was a crap lemon energy drink that wasn't great at being a lemon drink or an energy drink, 3 out of 10.

31 stores?

Tents in all shapes and sizes!

Would not want to be the person having to shape this.

Back into Wellington I walked down along the bay to Frank Kitts Park and the Civic Centre. They have a few sculptures and nice bridges around the place as well as a few public buildings. One such building was the City Gallery Wellington which Jason thought would be good to visit - at least it was free. The gallery was totally pointless, they had several big rooms set up with just one or two pieces of weird artwork that anyone could have put together - one had a couple of masks and another had a wooden desk.

Part of the City To Sea bridge, really a City To City bridge.

These guys.

Floating ball thing.

This was my highlight of the gallery, screw the no photo policy.

I also started to walk down Manners Street or Manners Mall, whatever it is called, but didn't go too far as I planned to be coming back past the next day anyway. Instead we turned back to Lambton Quay and got in line for a trip on the Wellington Cable Car! This cable car is not like the ones in San Francisco but just a funicular that goes up and down the hill and takes only a few minutes, it wasn't free but only costs a few dollars and is an easy way to get up to the top.

This would make a great toboggan ride.

At the top of the hill they have a free Cable Car Museum which wasn't bad, they had a bit of history about how the cable cars were used in the past in Wellington and a few displays too. Also at the top of the hill is the Botanic Gardens - no good city is complete without one. Due to the amount of walking we'd already done again today we just took the short route around the edge of the gardens, passing a couple of weird art structures again and a rose garden before heading down the hill and back to downtown.

More neat artwork in the gardens.

At the New World supermarket I found a two litre banana milk! and another flavour of Demon energy drink, this one was called Ice and came in a blue can instead. The blue edition wasn't as good as the original red one so I'd only give it a 7 out of 10. For dinner we made the sad discovery that lots of restaurants shut down some time between lunch and 5pm, which included the Burrito King I wanted to visit, so instead we just had to settle for the local Subway since I was too exhausted to walk around and find anything else.

Lambton Quay.

Dinner and breakfast. All the key food groups.

First impression of the hotel:

• Crap TV options again
• They have coin-operated laundry facilities
• They didn't provide any paper or pens in the room!
• They don't have any free internet and the rates are terrible ($10 for two hours of $23 for a day, but with low data limits as well)

New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 09 (Lightning Seeds)

Today was the day of the big race, the Auckland Round The Bays 8.4km annual race. If you could provide evidence that you could run it in under 35 minutes you could get a seeded start, which is not all that hard really, so Jason and I were both able to qualify for that. The warm up jog from the hotel down to the start line was only about two kilometres, so we arrived at the start about forty five minutes before the race was due to begin. Amazingly there was already thousands of people in line for the regular start, so it was really lucky that we had the preferential start, otherwise five minutes or more might have been lost during the race trying to deal with the crowds of slow people.

Only about one hundred people in total had registered for the seeded start strangely, and as the start drew closer we did some final warm ups on the course in front of the start line. There was two timing mats set up at the start, one that all of the crowd was behind and then a gap of about 10 metres before the next mat. As we were told to head to the start line by the staff we all assumed this section between the two mats was for the seeded runners, but then a couple of minutes later we were told we had to get behind both mats, so we had to push the crowd back and squeeze in behind the other mat as well - hardly an ideal start to be squashed in worse than a Metallica concert. What was more confusing was that they had two lanes for the start, and all of the seeded runners were put into the outside lane.

The gun went off and everyone raced away too fast for their own good like usual. Because we were in the outside lane a number of runners who just turned up early were also off to a good start from the inside lane, so it was a little hard to keep count of what position I was in - I figured about fifty were ahead after the initial madness had subsided. I was feeling pretty good through the first three kilometres and overtook a few more people as we went along the twists and turns of Tamaki Drive. The organisers had done a terrible job with the placement of the drink stations, as successive stations at about three and five kilometres were placed on the wrong side of the road than all the runners were on, and it would take too much time to go across and get a drink, so we all just had to keep on running. Another station was also handing out sliced oranges, which sounds like one of the worst and stickiest things you could try to give to a runner.

I finally got a drink station at six kilometres, as I was starting to desperately run out of energy and hydration - I'd overtaken a few more people but a couple had come past me as well, and Jason was still somewhere close behind as well. The drink station actually did about as much bad as good, due to the loss of oxygen while trying to run and drink at the same time, it took another kilometre to get back into your normal routine, but I felt that my legs never really recovered.

I was really struggling for the last kilometre as my legs just didn't want to keep going, but I just managed to hold on and not lose any more positions. The website eventually said I finished 29th out of 26,816 finishers (and 33,726 entrants) with a time of 31 minutes and 0 seconds exactly, which was also equal to the runner in 28th place too. Jason came in fifteen seconds behind in 32nd place.

After a warm down jog it was on to a shuttle bus back to the city. I figured the eight to ten kilometre trip should only take fifteen minutes on a Sunday morning, but the route went all through the suburbs and took more like forty minutes. It would have been quicker to just jog back in the opposite direction.

After stopping in at the hotel it was quickly back out for the afternoon adventured. I picked up a Demon energy drink from the New World supermarket (which generally seems to be a bit better than Countdown) to have with my lunch, it was great and similar to a Monster energy drink, I'd give it a 9 out of 10. With lunch finished it was time to board the ferry for a quick trip across to Devonport, which only takes about ten minutes.

Devonport.

Devonport looks like your typical beach side town, we walked up Victoria Road which mostly consists of cafes, restaurants and arts & crafts stores. At the top of Victoria Road the real hill up to Mount Victoria begins, again it wasn't too long or steep and only took a few minutes to reach the top. The view from the mountain was quite good, you can see the rest of Devonport and Rangitoto Island to the east, and all of Auckland to the south. Other parts of New Zealand that I don't know are in the other directions as well.

Victoria Road in Devonport.

Rangitoto Island again, about as close as I got to it...

The big city.

Me and the big city.

Back down the hill and then it was across the beach road to North Head at the easternmost point of the island. At the end they have a free Torpedo Bay Navy Museum, so we stopped in for a quick look. The museum was quite good as it detailed some of New Zealand's involvement in most of the wars of the twentieth century.

Who knew they had a navy?

After getting the ferry back to Auckland we had to find a regular bus back down Tamaki Drive to Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium. I wasn't too sure about going to any such wildlife centres but this one seemed to be receiving generally positive reviews so I went against my better judgement. We just missed the free 2:30pm shuttle bus, and they have a stupid schedule for these free buses, e.g. 2:20pm, 2:30pm then 3:20pm. Instead we just got a regular bus, and I noticed at the other end that the last free bus back is at 3:30pm even though the place doesn't close until 5:00pm, pretty stupid.

The aquarium was very expensive at $36 so I was expecting good things, but we walked through the whole place in under an hour, without going too fast, all they really had was:

• Penguins
• Rays
• A tunnel with sharks overhead
• Some fish

I found a $2.50 magnet at the gift shop at the end, only the stupid woman gave me $37.50 change back from $50. She claimed that the register still had an old charge of $10 on it, nice job...

High hopes before entering the aquarium.

Some penguins, not bad.

Rays don't do much.

Hard to figure out how big the sharks were from inside the tunnel.

Enjoy the colours, because your trip is about to end.

The aquarium exit leaves you on Tamaki Drive in Mission Bay. Just a little further down the road was the MJ Savage Memorial Park who I think is (or was) a former prime minister of New Zealand and no relation to the Macho Man Randy Savage. The park is a pretty cool massive open space overlooking the bay and the city, but otherwise there isn't much to see and do for adventure seekers or sightseers (not sure which one of those best describes me, if either), other than a centrepiece called Bastion Point. The exit at the other end of the park leads down to the Mission Bay beach and shops, still quite close to the city. I didn't have time to look around as the next bus was coming down the street and I didn't really want to try my luck and wait for the next one after that. The bus prices are quite ridiculous for these short trips too, you can't buy a return ticket so a quick ten minute trip each way costs $3.40 per person. Perhaps it's cheaper with the transit card or there's some form of bus transfer you can get, but I didn't know anything about that.

Bastion Point.

MJ Savage Memorial Park (ooh yeah).

Back in downtown the race and the long day was finally catching up, and I was starting to break down with one form of leg pain after another. Finding a good rubber magnet lifted my spirits as did dinner at Burger Fuel! I got the V-Dub Vege Burger (without beetroot) and it was an instant 10 out of 10. If it's not the best burger restaurant I've ever been to it's definitely in the top two, but I don't recall the one in Hong Kong (Triple O's By White Spot) that specifically anymore. Another funny observation with fast food restaurants is that they have both the American and Australian version of Wendy's.

Burger Fuel, the new king of burgers.

With a bit of time to spare in the evening and not much planning to worry about for tomorrow (other than getting to the airport before the plane leaves) we went down to the nearby (and possibly only) cinema in the Auckland downtown area. The best option was Non-Stop, a plane hijacking movie with Liam Neeson which was quite conveniently timed given the Malaysian Airlines incident that began around about the same time. The movie was entertaining but hardly a classic, the script was quite questionable and there was a number of plot holes, 6 out of 10.

Civic on Queen Street.

So that was the end of a quick stay in Auckland.

Auckland: 7/10

Good

• Coloured money
• Downtown was alright, although mostly consists of Queen Street
• Lots of hills and parks
• Lots of stores selling frozen yoghurt
• Mild to warm weather
• Some different food, drink & fast food options

Bad

• Combined crosswalks
• Fairly expensive
• No calorie charts in most fast food restaurants
• No trains running all weekend (the train network doesn't really cover downtown even if it was running)
• Poor free to air TV options (I'm now very thankful for all those extra digital channels we have)
• Shopping options were pretty limited

Missed Out

• Auckland Domain
• Cornwall Park
• Mount Wellington Domain
• Newmarket (new)
• Orakei Basin walkway
• St. Heliers Bay

New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 08 (Who Needs That Britomart)

The first stop of the day was the Sky City Convention Centre to pick up the packs for tomorrow's race. Pack is a bit of an overstatement because the envelope simply contained the race bib, not even pins to attach them with. I went back and asked about it but they had no pins at the expo, with the suggestion being to bring your own if you have them (obviously), or there might be "a few" on race day - that's a few for more than 30,000 people.

Next it was down to the bay to the Britomart train station. Sadly I'd learned just a couple of days before the trip that the trains would be offline for the whole weekend for electrification works to continue - what the hell are they now if not electric? This meant we had to get terrific train replacement buses which are almost as bad as normal buses but at least you know where they're going to stop!

McDonalds french toast, why don't we have this!?

Ferry Building downtown.

The destination was Mount Eden so I went to the train ticket office to ask for two tickets to Mount Eden station - since it's a train replacement bus you still need to buy train tickets and pay according to the train ticket fares and zones. The woman at the counter asked if I was paying cash or card, and I said cash but I only had a 50 dollar note. She said I could pay out at the bus for a discount ($1.60 instead of $1.90 I think), and I double checked if they'd be able to take a fifty dollar note, to which she replied "you can try" - really helpful. So I went out to buy a ticket from the attendant, and of course when I said I only had fifty dollars he looked at me with annoyance and frustration, so I had to go back inside to buy the ticket after all, luckily still in time for the bus...

At Mount Eden station it wasn't too hard to find out where Mount Eden itself was (tip: it's the big hill), so we headed in that direction. It was quite a steep walk to the top, but only took about ten or fifteen minutes. At the top of the hill there is also a big crater which you aren't allowed to go into, probably because you'd hard time getting out again as much as any other reason.

After taking in the sights and surroundings it was back to downtown on the bus again. The bus was running late and the driver even went to the last two stations in the wrong order. Passing through the Newmarket area it seemed like there was some good food and shopping options around, so I may have to come back there later, preferably on a day when the trains are running again.

The road uphill to Mount Eden.

A big hole in the ground.

Rangitoto Island.

Me and a big hole in the ground.

Back at Britomart there was a small farmer's market set up, surprisingly there was a Japanese man (with New Zealand accent) selling taiyaki so I had to buy one - the red bean flavour! There was a few other shops around the Britomart transport centre but nothing good, just a high-priced official Nike store. Also nearby was Quay Street, walking through the old Ferry Building just lead to the boarding gates for the ferries and harbour tours, but further along was Mexicali Fresh! They have the best burritos because they load them full of stuff and you get to customise it just like a Subway sandwich.

The Britomart farmer's market.

Taiyaki, why don't we have this!?

Continuing west was Viaduct Harbour, where they have started to try and redevelop the wharfs into a place you would want to visit - so basically not the Melbourne Docklands. There was a small Silo Park made with real silos, and a small market selling useless junk and home made arts, actually that's useless junk too. There was also a fish market which sounded interesting by the description, I thought it might be like the famous Tokyo fish market, but it looked like they were just selling fish...

The walkway across Viaduct Harbour. Pedestrians give way to boats.

A miniature beach at Silo Park.

So we continued on to Victoria Park, not the one where Collingwood plays, which contains a few ovals with some local cricket matches in progress. My feet and legs were crying out for a break so I stopped to watch the cricket for a while and rest.

Continuing the loop around the city brought us back to Sky City and Sky Tower. I took a gamble that the observation level might be alright from the "southern hemisphere's tallest structure", despite a few hits and misses with similar experiences in the past. There are two different observation levels you can visit, one is about five levels higher than the other and requires a separate lift, not really sure why they need both. It turns out that Auckland has a varied and interesting landscape, so it was worth the visit.

Queen Street from the observation deck.

Me observing the observation deck.

The rest of downtown and a soon-to-be running course.

Just across the other side of Queen Street is Albert Park, not the one where they have the Formula One race. It was a nice enough park, situated close to the city if you lived or worked there, but otherwise it wasn't too remarkable. Before heading home for the day there was some time left to walk up Queen Street again and see if there was anything worth looking at in the shops, there was not a great deal of variety though.

Albert Park.

Also Albert Park.

My left knee was killing after so much walking for the day, which is exactly what I had planned not to do with the big race the next morning. Some rehab in the hotel swimming pool and a big dinner of pizza and Tank Juice (not as good as Boost Juice) was a good end to the day at least.

Aotea Square off Queen Street.

Anzac flavour, why don't we have this!?

New Zealand Holiday 2014, March 07 (Point Break)

It's been just about seven months since my last holiday, although I was already keen for a break during December and January and then by March I was feeling a bit more refreshed at work. Anyway, here we are and it's off to New Zealand for nine days!

I decided to try something different and take the train to Southern Cross and then an airport bus this time (also because there was nobody to drive me). It went pretty well and was even fast, so maybe we don't need that airport monorail after all... Due to the time difference the flight was from 10am AUS to nearly 4pm NZ, and by the time the airport bus at the other end had reached Auckland downtown and I'd found the hotel it was more like 5:30pm.

After quickly unpacking it was down to Queen Street to find some dinner. Again due to the timezone difference it was a bit weird to be having dinner at 4pm AUS time (some people are still just finishing lunch) but the basketball was starting at 7:00pm so there wasn't much choice (since nobody likes sports stadium food, and they definitely don't like paying for it). After a quick look at the options close by, one (of the many) kebab places looked alright. I think I may have also eaten some foil as a bonus, then it was off to Vector Arena.

Vector Arena, not sure what they did for entertainment before it opened in 2007.

On the way I had a look in a couple of convenience stores, and was surprised to find that everything in NZ appears to be a bit more expensive than it is in Australia. We probably have the poor performance of the AUS dollar recently to thank for that, as the exchange rate I got at the ATM before leaving was exactly one to one. Vector Arena was pretty easy to find, and we made it in time for the game start - the seats were pretty good too, second row in the upper deck.

The match was between the New Zealand Breakers, winners of the last three NBL championships, and the Melbourne Tigers. I don't like the Tigers so I'm prepared to support anyone else, even a New Zealand team evidently. The match start was a bit poor, with the Breakers not scoring for about five minutes, but finally got things going and controlled the second and third quarters to be leading comfortably by about ten points. Somewhere towards the end of the third quarter they fell apart completely though, and hardly scored in the final quarter to go down by about ten points at the end.

I think this is CJ Bruton's entrance.

Game time.

The Breakers needed to win this game to have a realistic chance to make the finals, but being down ten points with less than a minute I'd say it's time to just give up, yet instead they kept fouling and trying to catch up those points all the way to the end. Overall not a bad venue and match, the only downside being the stupid kids in the row behind with their crappy thunder sticks. These thunder sticks are the worst invention since the vuvuzela, and it took them about three quarters to lose interest in constantly clapping them together - coincidentally about as long as the NZ Breakers were winning.

On the way back to the hotel there was just time to stop in at Woolworths before it was closing, only it's called Countdown throughout NZ for some reason - what kind of name is that? I've also learnt that they have instituted the combined crosswalk strategy over here, where all traffic stops so that pedestrians can cross the intersection in any direction. I don't know why they do this, it just seems to be slower and less effective for everyone involved.

Back at the hotel. Get ready for lots of Sky Tower.

First impressions of the hotel:

• The free internet is capped at 256k - I heard New Zealand internet was bad, but 256k?
• The free internet is not only slow but the wifi connection keeps dropping out
• The TV channels are a bit limited and the two sports channels always have rugby!
• There is a phone in the bathroom next to the toilet, not sure why that is necessary

Baking Brad Episode 36

This is episode thirty six - marbled chocolate muffins.

Recipe

• From 1001 Cupcakes Cookies And Other Tempting Treats

Good

• Made a good dozen muffins
• Reasonable taste

Bad

• I only got to eat two before leaving on holiday
• Made a bad guess splitting the recipe in half (chocolate is added to one half)

Ratings

• The Cook - 7/10
• The Taste - 7/10

The ingredients.

Marbled chocolate muffins, one already eaten.

Baking Brad Episode 35

This is episode thirty five - cinnamon knots (half recipe).

Recipe

• From 1001 Cupcakes Cookies And Other Tempting Treats

Good

• Found a quick use for three spare sheets of puff pastry hanging around in the freezer forever
• Nothing much else...

Bad

• The pastry strips didn't want to tie up in a knot, so I left them flat
• The taste was lacking, needed more cinnamon and sugar

Ratings

• The Cook - 6/10
• The Taste - 4/10

The ingredients.

Cinnamon knots (nots).