Day Twelve - Auckland

It’s another flying day! We woke up at 6 and got everything packed and ready to go on the airplane by 6:45 so we had time to get a bit of breakfast at the hotel. We loaded the car and got a quick bite then drove the 15 minutes to the airport and dropped off the car at the airport in record time. Third time driving in a foreign country and everything went perfectly smooth. Didn’t hit any curbs and didn’t fall off a mountain. Win!

We got our bags checked in and made our way through security. I will never stop being shocked by how fast security is over here. 5 minutes tops. No line. We got some snacks and located our gate to wait a bit until we are allowed to board. Mom had gone through all the magazines she brought and couldn’t find any new ones she wanted to read, so I downloaded The Hobbit on the kindle app on her phone and she started reading while I started the second book I brought, Lightlark.

Our flight was a little delayed (completely fine because we don’t have set plans this afternoon) and we ended up leaving a little while after 10. It was a smooth flight and mom and I read the entire time on the plane. We landed a bit before noon, collected our bags, and caught an Uber to our hotel.

We dropped got settled in and took a look at the schedule for the Weta Experience and saw they were booking up fast so I got us tickets for 2:10 and we headed out to find lunch before our tour. We walked a short way down to Federal St. and got a table at Federal Delicatessen, a New York City style eatery. It was set up to look like a New York City diner and the food was amazing. I got a bbq pulled pork sandwich, mom got a tuna melt, and there were about five more things on the menu we both wanted to try, so we planned to come back for dinner later.

If you aren’t familiar with Weta, the Weta Workshop is a visual effects studio in New Zealand that has won seven Oscars and worked on SO MANY amazing films including Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Men in Black, Dune, and several Marvel films. Their workshop is located in Wellington, which we unfortunately won’t get to, but they have set up the experience in Auckland to show off some of their models, the design process, and to let folks play with practical visual effects, which is a lot of fun. We had a good time going through and seeing the behind the scenes work on so many amazing films.

We picked up a few souvenirs on the way out and headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit. There was nothing on TV so mom and I both settled in to read in our respective books  for a couple of hours. Around 6 we decided to go to the shops to look for something to eat for breakfast in the morning, since it’s likely nothing will be open at 5:30 in the morning. We stopped into several shops looking for food (and, for mom, TimTams) and settled on getting some yogurt for the morning. We dropped our haul off at the room and walked back to the Federal Delicatessen for our snack dinner.

It was tragically closed (*cries*).

They’re only open 8-3, so no dinner. We walked around the surrounding area looking for something that looked good for dinner and though we found another souvenir shop, we couldn’t find anywhere that we liked that had tables available (seriously, after the third restaurant we thought Auckland just didn’t want us to have dinner).

There was a Chinese restaurant with Korean BBQ across the street from our hotel, so in our last ditch effort we went to see if we could eat there. They had plenty of tables and a massive menu, so we had a seat, ordered some bbq, and relaxed after an hour walking around fruitlessly looking for dinner. It was delicious and mom got to try out Korean bbq for the first time.

We got ready for bed and I found Taskmaster on TV to watch for a bit before we went to sleep.