Our time in New Zealand has come to an end!

When Suz and I arrived in Auckland the original plan was to stay 1 maybe 2 months and then return to Sydney. But, we all know that it didn’t quite turn out that way though, did it? =)

8 months later and the time came for us to leave the country, the only reason we stayed for so long was because we both managed to get good jobs so that we could support our stay in NZ and also save for the next trip. Since the last blog we haven’t really done anything so there is not much to tell….. but we will try and make it worthwhile.

When we came back in April from our trip to the South Island we both realized that we pretty much had seen all we wanted to see in New Zealand, sure we still haven’d done the Abel Tasman national park and Hawkes Bay but we had seen everything else that this country has to offer. And it’s been great. By the time we got back from the south, we realized that we now had to start saving for the upcoming trip and therefore we didn’t venture outside of Auckland during our last three months.

We did a few things here and there, we managed to catch the world premiere of the “Weird Al” Yankovic World Tour which was absolutely hilarious. He performed all his famous songs such as; “I’m Fat”, “Smeels like Nirvana”, “Amish Paradise” and of course his new song “White and Nerdy”. For all the acts he dressed the part and between songs when he was changing outfits we were shown video clips from his “interviews” with different celebrities. We were in stitches, it was just hilarious.

During another weekend Beatrice came to visit us and we took her to our favorite Ramen restaurant, it’s just a hole in the wall restaurant (very tiny) but they serve the best Miso Ramen with Gyozas…..yum!!

Another Japanese experience was when we went with Max to a place called Tanuki’s Cave. Here we could order a lot of small dishes that came in servings of two tiny samples…. so we had to order quite a few to fill us up, quite interesting and very tasty!

On one of our Fridays, Max wanted to show us the Russian Club in Auckland. So Suz and I, together with Mike and Daren went with him to see what it was all about. We entered the club, and felt a bit out of place at first but soon got used to it. Most of us got some alcoholic drinks such as a beer, wine or similar but Max rocked up to the counter and order some cake and tea, this place is awesome! I made a promise that the next time I visited this place I would order the tea and cake =)) The music in the Russian Club was pretty interesting as well, it was all 90’s europop playing and I felt as if I was back in high school again.

After a few more weeks our trip was coming close to an end so we decided that a small celebration was in order, and what better place to head to than Auckland Skytower. We booked the place to go and have dessert and before we sat down we were able to sneak up to the observation deck to enjoy the views of the city.

It’s a great view from the tower at night time, specially from the Orbit Restaurant. The restaurant is revolving and during an hour you get a full 360 degrees view of Auckland and its surroundings. We enjoyed our dessert on top of the city, a great way to finish off our stay in Auckland.

The last thing we had now was my leaving party from Vodafone. We went to our standard bar, the “O’Hagans Irish Bar” for last drinks. Here we stayed for quite a while and I kept getting a new beer in front of me as soon as I finished 3/4 of the one I had in front of me, dunno how that happened 😉 I guess it’s always nice being the one leaving =)

Well, after that our time had pretty much come to an end, we had drinks on Friday, on Saturday we went to the movies to spend some of the movie vouchers that I had and then on Sunday we just spent the whole day cleaning the apartment.

So how can we sum up New Zealand?
We loved it! The country has a lot to offer, the people are very nice, the nature is beautiful and it’s very easy to get around and to see it all!

After spending 8 months in the country we can honestly say that we’ve managed to see most of the “big” sights that it has to offer, when you ask people that have visited New Zealand “what you should see?” they will probably tell you that you should spend most of your time in the South Island as it has more to offer. Well, we’ve been as north as Paihia and as south as Dunedin and I must say that the North Island is our favorite, sure the Southern Alps are stunning and beautiful but places such as Tongariro and Rotorua just offer so much more.

We will return to New Zealand eventually for some skiing in the south and also to meet up with some of the good friends that we made in Auckland. For now….it’s time to go back to Sydney for a short two weeks before we embark on our next world tour.