Da Life in Da Auzzie~: NZ Trip 08

Having a bad first day as a start of the trip, we are determined to make the rest of the trip as enjoyable as we can. As we already missed the Sky Tower yesterday, we decided to squeeze it in today's plan, along with other activities. =)

We left the hotel at 7am in the morning, and headed out to our first destination, the Otara Morning Market.

Otara Morning Market

Otara is a suburb of Auckland, and with it, the Otara Morning Market has been recommended in TripAdvisor.com when i was researching on what to do in Auckland (which is seriously not much). From the map the suburb looks like a 45 minutes drive away place, but to our surprised we arrived in 20 minutes. However, with inadequate map and lack of info, we got lost in Otara, and had to ask around before we finally found the busy morning market, when rain started pouring like crazy.

Otara Morning Market, operates only at Saturdays 7am - 12pm

Me and Persimmons, its dirt cheap and damn sweet, makes me wonder why Aussie does not have such sweet and cheap ones.

Apples, a type that is only found in NZ, which is damn cheap and sweet as well =)

Another view of the market

The girls

The market itself has quite a wide range of stuff, from vegetables to fruits to daily essentials to cooked food. We walked around very briefly as it was raining pretty hard. We stopped at a Chinese uncle's stall to look at his cookies when we found out that he a Penangite, who came 20 years ago to Auckland to work. He sold us a bag of his homemade cookies and told us to be careful in Auckland as there are many cases of snatch thieves happening, especially to tourists. After walking one round, we walk hurriedly back to our car as the rain starts to fall even heavier.

The cookies we bought from the uncle. Can't really see anything from the pic but its actually quite good

Bought some Char Siu Pau from another stall, not too bad but of course uncomparable to Malaysia =)

And off we go to our next destination, the Auckland Fish Market.

Auckland Fish Market

The fish market can be considered a major disappointment to me. As I've visited the one in Sydney before, i was expecting something similar, but was being greeted by a factory look-alike building with only two shops on the ground floor, no crowds, and no fresh oysters in sight. We were one of the very few customers around and the whole place look dead. However, the fishes do look fresh and the price reasonable. We ended up buying two pieces of fish (one salmon the other king fish) to be cooked tonight for dinner.

Auckland Fish Market

Fishy 4, seen outside the fish market

Me & Jia

Fish Market

As we were leaving the fish market, we saw a spot nearby that gives quite a spectacular view of the not-so-far-away city and clear green water...thus, photo session time.

The view

SH and HY

Me and Jia

City Council

We drove back to the hotel and parked at the curbside again, then walked towards the city council to pay the tow fine. Little that we know, or realized, that its Saturday, and on Saturdays, government offices are usually close. Thus, a wasted walk there, but we anyhow took a walk around the premises.

A cool car we saw on the way, a car that i will buy when im old n rich

"Office Hours, Monday to Friday..........uh oh"

Me with Lord Auckland

View

We walked back to our car, then drove to a nearby suburb for our next place of interest, the Auckland Museum.

Auckland Museum

A moderate-sized museum but with lots of stuff to see, at least for me as i'm always interested in WWII and this museum has a whole floor filled with it.

Auckland Museum, which was used to be called Auckland War Memorial Museum

A Memorial remembering the soldiers of the wars

Me and Jia

Me trying to take the picture below

The ceiling of the museum

Maori sculptures

This...just looks weird, and wrong

Kiwi bird and its egg. Notice how big the egg is relatively to its own body

Zero

Spitfire

Outside of the Museum, when leaving

After leaving the museum, we went and find a place to park somewhere near the city, and walked to Queens St. again for a quick lunch @ Burger King, then went to our next destination, the Sky Tower.

City of Auckland

The Streets

Where we parked our car

Sky Tower

After visiting a few big cities, i reakon that it is a characteristic, or a show of how rich the city is, for a city to have a tower to overlook the whole city; Sydney - Sydney Tower, Melbourne - Melbourne Rialto 360', KL - KL Tower, and Auckland - Sky Tower. See the pattern? =P

Anywayz, it wasnt cheap to get on the tower, but as we are students with student ID, we get to buy cheaper tickets for $18 per person to visit both the main observation deck and the sky deck, which is higher up.

Very similar to other towers that i have been to, only different thing they have is that they have bungy jumps from the tower itself (not exactly bungy, but just lowering you down at high speed from the top to the bottom).

Sky Tower from the bottom

Sky Tower

Me n Jia, notice how the floor is actually thick glass so we can see alll the way down

Sky deck entry

Us @ The Sky Deck

KungFu Panda!

Get what I mean for "not exactly bungy"? u just dun bunge-gy! you drop all the way!

We left Sky Tower, got our car, and went back to the hotel to wait for Jia's friend to come pick her up for dinner. After she left, us 3 went to our final destination of the day, One Tree Hill.

One Tree Hill

Yes, there is supposed to have ONE tree up there, but apparently it has been chopped off in 2003 as it has been too badly vandalised during one of the protest by the people. So, One Tree Hill has no tree, but a large monument, lots and lots of sheeps, and a very beautiful night view of the city. Still worth the time and effort to get there =).

Sheeps

Monument

And me, with the night view

We didnt get to take much pictures up there as one of the two cameras is with Jia, and the other camera is totally outta batt. So, we used only our phones for pictures. As the weather gets colder and the sky gets even darker, we left the place and head back to the hotel.

Dinner

Dinner was the two pieces of fish we bought earlier in the fish market with a pack of instant noodles each. As we dun really wanna invest too much in other food stuff, we just bought the cheapest salt and pepper we can find, cover the whole fish with loads of them, then grill it in the oven for 30 minutes.