Down Under Day Three

Tuesday in Auckland NZ was a free day, or what the travel agencies call an "at leisure" day. I woke up at around 5 AM, due to having crashed early and hard the night before AND having an unpleasant head cold that made sleep difficult. I think Deborah got up around 6 AM and did her morning ablutions before we headed down to breakfast around 7 AM. It was the same deal as yesterday - fruit and muesli with oat milk, plus coffee with oat milk for me. It's actually a quite satisfying and healthy breakfast.

Our at leisure activity for the day was to buy a couple day passes to the hop on/off bus that cruises around Auckland, stopping every 30 minutes or so at various city attractions. We had originally considered taking a ferry ride out to a nearby island, full of restaurants and wineries, and doing a different hop on/off bus there, but decided against that for three good reasons. The primary reason was the weather. It was rainy and gray, and not especially warm. Had the weather been gorgeous, we might have gone to the island anyway, despite not being big wine drinkers (winos) and being fairly certain the restaurants would not cater to vegan eating, just to enjoy the scenery.

At the same time that we bought the bus tickets, we also scored some discounted tickets for the Auckland Aquarium, one of the stops on the hop on/off bus, and that was our planned destination by way of stops at the Auckland Zoo and the Auckland Museum of Tranportation and Technology (MOTAT). The latter two stops turned out to be duds, due to the weather. At the ticketing entrance to the zoo, the woman working there actively dissuaded us from buying tickets, because, she said, the animals all go into their dens when it rains, so we'd be wasting money. So, we didn't go in. Instead we walked to the MOTAT, which was a longer walk (in drizzling rain) than we expected and we thought we were lost for a brief moment. So, by the time we got to the entrance for the MOTAT, we had lost most of our motivation to go in. Plus, Deborah's feet were bothering her, due to the long walk. So, we located the hop on/off bus and proceeded to the Auckland Aquarium, which we did go into (since we had already pre-purchased tickets) and enjoyed.

After the aquarium, we hopped on the hop on/off bus again and hopped off at a stop near the Gorilla Kitchen vegan cafe for a late lunch/early dinner. We once again ordered way too much food, and the restaurant did not skimp on portions, which has been a consistent finding here in Auckland. I had a vegan "phish" and chips that was very good. The "phish" appeared to be made from some sort of textured vegetable protein. We shared some deep fried mushrooms and a vegan pizza, but couldn't finish the pizza. We took it back to the hotel in a to go box.

In a state of food coma, we fell into evening power naps that transitioned into full fledged sleep at some point, not waking again until morning.

Sidebar: At some point after arriving in Auckland, I caught a nasty head cold, despite my best efforts at hand sanitizing and masking during our travels. This made sleep uncomfortable and I had to take lots of OTC cold meds most of the days of our stay.

Fin.