The Other Windy City

We nearly got blown off the top of a volcano today. Okay, not really, but it is hella windy here in Auckland, and the winds grew to monstrous proportions when we were on top of Mt. Eden, an extinct volcano. I'll have photos later to prove it.

This must be a short post, as V and I have to catch a bus to Rotorua in about an hour. But Auckland has been lovely. Well, the weather was crap yesterday when we arrived, so after a bit of walking around we took a long nap. Fortunately when we finally woke up and left the hotel room, it cleared up. Today has been beautiful and sunny, just really, really windy.

Hopefully I'll be able to fill in the cracks later, but today involved lots of walking. We meant to do the harbour to harbour walk from the north end of Auckland to the south. We were defeated pretty early on and wound up taking the bus part way, but that was an experience in itself. Especially when V tried to put coins in the slot where the ticket spits out. The bus driver got a real kick out of that, especially as V and I collapsed into what was probably our 4th set of giggles that day.

Our day also consisted of a) a fried Snickers bar that nearly killed V, b) pumpkin soup in a bread bowl, mmmmm... c) cute college boys giving us directions as we helplessly held out our three city maps (yes, we're aware that we're at least 10 years older than these boys), d) wind...much wind... and e) watching other people jump off the 190-meter Sky Tower (attached to a bungy cord, of course) which is so high up that we got dizzy just from standing on the top floor last night. I may not have it in me to bungy, I realized, but we'll see. Oh yes, and gambling is legal in New Zealand so we lost money rather quickly on the slots. It happens.