Auckland — 2 February 2001

We woke early and headed down the hill to a cafe for breakfast. The coffee was fantastic, the muffin yummy, and D'Angelo on the sound system. We had traveled for a day and a half and found ourselves in Jenland.

Being the public transportation experts that we are, we decided to give the Auckland system a go. We found the bus terminal fairly quickly and the man at the ticket booth was more than happy to tell us the best bus to take.

The bus let us off opposite Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter & Underwater World. Since we were visiting during the week, we didn't have to wait in line. Had we had to, there would have been lots of material to read. Education and conservation were the keywords. One of the best aquariums I have visited. We did two laps of the underwater world.

Looking at all those fish made us hungry. We hoped back on the bus heading out of town. In Mission Bay, we walked the length of the board-walk, ending up at the last eatery on the row, the Fish Pot Cafe. We ate our fish & chips under a tree overlooking the Hauraki Gulf.

On the bus ride back, Carl spotted Lombard Street, which twisted down the side of a hill. Hmmmm...

Back in the city we explored some more by walking up and down Karangahape Road (everyone calls it K' Road), a pocket of Polynesian community with a healthy dose of youth culture. At the end of our walk we happened upon Symonds Street Cemetery. One of Auckland's oldest burial grounds, the cemetery is non-denominational and was one of the few places we saw any evidence of Jews. More on this later.

For some reason, this made us crave ice cream (everything makes us crave ice cream) so we headed down Queen Street. Not finding any open ice cream parlors and not brave enough to try Yum Yum American Donuts, we decided it was close enough to the dinner hour to start looking for a place to eat. We ended up at Ginger's, a coffee joint/bar/restaurant/club opposite Paris Texas and the Bronx (two clothing stores). Fortunately, we were too early for the club scene and right on time for a very cheap and yummy Korean dinner.

After eating Carl checked his email at Cyber Gate, two store fronts away from the Kiwi International. 91 messages in 3 days! I did not check my email and instead hung out and watched the city.