Michelle
A lot has happened in the past 4 days. Be warned that this will be a loooooonnnnngggg post. :D

Friday night I stayed up all night to finish my last challenge for the Scrappy 500. I didn't finish till 6am and my flight up to Auckland was at 8.15am on Saturday morning. I laid down for 30 minutes and then had to get up to shower and get to the airport. I couldn't even begin to imagine how I did it, but I did.

We had a girls' weekend planned in
Auckland. Just Laura, Jessica, Lies and myself - a weekend of eating yummy food, shopping and hanging out. When we got to Auckland it was raining! That was kinda disappointing because Wellington was unusually sunny albeit windy when we left. We took a bus down to Auckland city and headed to the New President Hotel where we had rooms booked. We were lucky that our rooms were ready early so we didn't have to wait till 12pm to check in. Then off we went in search of an early lunch, not many places were open yet. We finally went to a Chinese foodcourt. The food looked really good but when they arrived, we were sorely disappointed. The taste was not even near as good as what they looked like. After our early lunch we had a look around a few shops and went off in search of a bus to take us to Dressmart (outlet stores) in Onehunga. After looking around and asking people, we found the right bus stop and bus and off we went. I had 40 winks on the way there (about 35-45 minutes bus ride I think).

Things were fairly cheap at these outlet stores... the only problem was that there were hardly any our sizes left. But we still came out with a few purchases. By about 4.30pm we pretty much saw everything and all we wanted to do was to go back to the hotel and have a quick rest before heading out to dinner.


Waiting for the bus after a long afternoon of shopping.



We had dinner at Mai Thai. The food there were amazing!!!!



I had an embarrassing moment as we were leaving. I fell down 2 steps, my boots got caught on the steps and according to the girls, when I fell my position looked like one of a frog leaping! That was totally humiliating! It didn't help that the floors were wood - so you can imagine how loud the sound was! OMG!

After dinner, we went back to the hotel for a short while and then met up with my friends Jasmine and Kevin. They took us to a lounge/bar called Rakinos. It was great catching up with them. I had a mojito which was a huge mistake. Don't get me wrong, I love mojitos, but because I hadn't had any sleep, I was feeling really drowsy after about 1/3 of the mojito. Needless to say I didn't finish it... what a shame.

Next Jessica's friend Leo met up with us and we went to Minus 5 - This bar is totally cool! The whole interior (except for the floors) is made of ice. There were ice sculptures everywhere and even the glasses for your drinks were made of ice. We were given a thick jacket, ugg boots and gloves to wear inside. There's only a certain number of people allowed inside at a time and every group gets to be in there for 30 minutes. The bar admits people on every hour and half hour (do I make sense? LOL!). My camera battery died not long after we got there.. and I thought I had my spare battery with me! Turned out that I left it on the table back in Wellington! AAAAARRRGGHHHH ! What a mare!! Thankfully Jessica had lots of space left on her memory card and her battery was still going so she was very kind to take a few more of me. I'll have to get them off her this weekend.




Day 2 in Auckland - YUMCHA (dimsum) was for brunch. We went to Grand Harbour and had really great yumcha ... everything tasted great!!



After yumcha we caught a bus to Newmarket to have a wander around the shops and the shopping mall. Didn't really buy much but had a great time looking around. Found a few good deals - there seem to be sales on everywhere. Eventually our feet were aching and we were quite tired, so we had afternoon tea after shopping in Newmarket at Michels Patisserie. Yummy chocolate cake, tiramisu and strawberry flan.



We went and caught the bus back into town after that and went our separate ways. All of us had different plans for dinner and agreed to meet up later that evening. Jessica went off to meet up with her friends. Lies, Laura and myself to freshen up. Lies had dinner with her friend and Laura and I had dinner together at Food Alley. After dinner Laura went to meet up with her friend and I met up with Kevan. We had coffee at Gloria Jeans in Borders - it was great catching up with him.

All of us met back at the hotel and went off to get coffee at Hilton but the cafe there was closed. We ended up getting Burger King (very naughty!) and just hung out in our rooms. I went off to check my emails and get my vote in for the last lap of Scrappy 500. And that was the end of our 2nd day in Auckland.

Last day in Auckland - I woke up to a grey rainy day. Quite disheartening really, but at least it's not too cold in Auckland.
Here we are just woken up. Who said that you have to be all dressed and made up to have photos taken? :)



After checking out, we trekked up to Upper Queen Street (uphill for a good 15 minutes) for lunch at a Korean Restaurant called Bu Tu Mak (not sure if I got the spelling right). These are what we had: Bibimbab, Ahl Tang (Fish Roe soup), Yukaejang (Beef stew), Gajami (Fried flounder) and man du (dumplings). What a feast!!!

Food...glorious food....



After a yummy lunch, we wandered to High Street to take photos. And after 3 photos, it started pouring down on us! We ran to a block of shops/apartments for cover. This is my favorite photo from the trip. This is such a cool poster/wall art outside a restaurant called Wagamama. We didn't eat there. In fact we stumbled upon this place when we were looking for shelter from the rain. And I really liked this poster/wall art.



This is the other poster for Wagamama. I still like the other one better. This one got a bit cut off at the top....The girl had her hair in tiny curls and chopsticks poked through them.



With the rain pouring down in bucket loads.. we couldn't really do much, so we went to a cafe (didn't even notice the name!) and got some hot tea and cakes to share. Chocolate mascarpone baked cheesecake, tiramisu cheesecake (Jessica loves tiramisu) and chocolate & peanut butter cookie (I can't rotate the photo for some reason).



By then it was almost 5pm. We went off to Dunkin Donuts to pick up our orders (There's no Dunkin Donuts here in Wellington, so usually we bring them back given the chance). After picking up our donuts, we went back to the hotel to get our luggage and catch a taxi to the airport.



We were scared that our flight may be cancelled as our friends told us that it was really foggy in Wellington and the plane might not be able to land. Thankfully the flight was just delayed for 15 minutes. Got home, unpacked a little, had a shower and checked my emails.
And that was the end of my long weekend! A tiring but extremely memorable and fun one.

If you've made it to here.. thanks for peeking and reading my blog. :) Will post more tomorrow. There's a few other things to post but I am truly too tired to type any more.
5 Responses
  1. Anonymous Says:

    Ok mich.. HUGE mistake for reading ur blog around this time (midnite). My stomach responsed immidiately as soon as i saw all the foods that we ate in akl!!! SOOO NOT HELPING our "plan". Hungry now...arrhhhh


  2. Shirley Says:

    OMGosh!!!! You are MY kind of woman, Michelle! I'm hungry just looking at all of those food pictures! ;) Sounds like you had a FAB girls' weekend!


  3. ~currant7 Says:

    Hi girl!

    Love the Wagamama photos especially the first one. That's one rocking photo.

    I got photos of my weekend too...I'll post them up on my blog soon...though most of them are better to be seen in my photo album since I had to make a presentation for my officemates...to chronicle our trip. :)


    Hugs,
    Cheryl


  4. Dessy Says:

    gimme one of those donuts mich :D


  5. Anonymous Says:

    I'm not OK.
    It's not a YUMMY weekend.

    It's a GORGEOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUS one!

    ;oD