Aukland, New Zealand

Even though New Zealand is only two hours ahead of Australia our bodies were a little confused with the time difference so we didn't wake up until gone 9 which is late for me! We showered and set off into town to find some breakfast as we had no milk to go with our muesli. We knew there was a little farmers market on today so we walked along Queens road, the Main Street in Auckland, and peered into all the shops. We finally found the farmers market and it was indeed small! But after looking round it all we chose a bacon and mushroom sandwich each as our breakfast. It was delicious, topped with a little bit of ketchup. It was nice to know that the bacon and mushrooms were local and they had great flavour. I've missed flavoursome bacon! The sandwich wasn't huge though and it was a little expensive so we chose to find a supermarket nearby a buy a pastry each. Of course, Matt chose the biggest one he could find whereas I chose I very yummy chocolate twisted pastry. It was moist but crisp. Maybe I'll make some of them at home too. 

We walked back up Queens road in the cold and passed a recycle shop so went in. It's basically a second hand clothes shop. Matt found a nice jacket which he purchased (it's still winter here). I felt jealous of his purchase so we headed back to K road and went in all the charity shops there to see if we could find cheap coats and jumpers. I found a wool jumper for $8 that is super thick and warm. I also got a belt for $3 as my jeans keep falling down. We quickly popped back to the hostel for a toilet break and discovered a shelf full of guide books (we could have stolen one of these for free). We found one from this year that was bigger and more detailed than the one we'd already bought so we sneakily swapped them. Feeling proud that we'd done that swap we headed back into town to get some lunch. We planned to find a supermarket but passed a Chinese restaurant where you could get a plate of food for $5. I was sold. I had some nice noodles that also had some veg mixed in and sweet and sour pork that wasn't the greatest. The sweet and sour sauce mixed in with the noodles was good though. I felt like I was back in Asia! I left some of the pork because it wasn't a nice texture. It was soft on the outside but a little crispy and chewy on the inside. Probably just cheap meat. 

After lunch we started a walking tour like we'd done in Brisbane. We walked past town hall and a theatre as well as cutting through a side street that had a memorial thing for women winning the vote. Good fact for you: New Zealand was the first country where women were allowed to vote (I think). We ended up at the art gallery but after checking out some of the Maori paintings we left as we wanted to go to travel agents and car hire companies to check out prices before they shut. The first travel shop we went in gave us some bus prices that were very high so we weren't feeling so hopeful when we went into four different car hire places for quotes. They turned out to be about the same as the bus prices including fuel! I guess it's because they will be divided between us and for a bus we'd have to get a ticket each. We'd ruled out buying a car because what with insurance and road side assistance and finding a good car it would get very pricey. 

Feeling excited about the prospect of getting a car we found a supermarket and decided to make ourselves a chicken dinner. Obviously we couldn't buy a whole chicken (even though Matt would eat it all) so we fried a chicken thigh each back at the hostel and had broccoli, a baked sweet potato and onion gravy. It was super tasty. After tea we had to wash our clothes as they were getting pretty smelly. This meant we had to be around to put them in the dryer after the washer so we used this time to look through all our leaflets on car hire and buses and chose which car hire company was the best (and cheapest). We also planned some more of our road trip before smelling our lovely clean clothes (it's a bit of a novelty) and going to bed.