Auckland – The Ciaccia’s, Cuisine, and Convertibles

After our easy one hour flight to Auckland we were greeted by our new friends Jeremy and Erin Ciaccia (Lorraine’s friend Wendy’s son and daughter in law), who are living and working in Auckland for two years until April 2009 (Check out their blog http://theciaccias.blogspot.com/). Jeremy and Erin took us for a tour of the city and brought us to One Tree Hill for a few photos and a quick scenic tour. We then headed to Mission Bay to a great restaurant for a lite lunch and bottle of wine… what we all do best, eat and drink. We then checked into the Aspen House, which seemed to be a hostel for the elderly, took a quick nap and freshened up. We met up with Jeremy and Erin at their place where we shared videos of our adventures, sipped on some more wine and then a walk through the Viaduct Harbor, a great waterfront section of town with trendy bars and restaurants.

After disregarding our coin flip decision for Italian that night, we made our way to Sushi Train, a restaurant that actually has sushi items going around on a conveyor belt, hence the “train”, where the customers sit around the train, bar style, and just “grab” the plates of sushi as they pass by (stupidly, we have no photo!). We jumped around to a bunch of different bars on the water and then ended our night at Danny Doolan's a local Irish pub with live music. We loved it so much that we stayed several hours after Jeremy and Erin had to head home to for an early Monday morning workday. Alison got hit on by a creepy leather faced old man and Melanie was harassed by Elijah Wood’s twin, aka Frodo Baggins. Despite the weirdness… we loved the bar because we’re suckers for live music!

The next morning, a bit dehydrated from all the wine, we got up and caught the ferry to Waiheke Island for some wine tasting and relaxation. As we arrived we decided to rent a car to be able to see the entire island and avoid the crowed wine tasting/olive grove tours. We lucked out and got the best “Goldmember” convertible on the island – ha… who do we think we are! Keeping with our theme of the trip “Eating and drinking our way through New Zealand” we stopped at several wineries for tastings and food and then more tastings and more food. The rest of our trip through the island consisted of our first beach visit with a nap under a tree, a stroll down the beach, a chat with the local llamas, a reenactment of the Whitesnake rock video with Tawny Catan, browsing through shops, and finishing off our visit with what else… more food and drinks, local olives and a loaf of bread!

As we arrived back on the main land in Auckland, Jeremy and Erin once again greeted us for an Italian feast (yes… we ate again. At least point in time we have at least gained 5 kilos each, you do the math! Yet the trip is not even half way over.. check out the photo shop pictures of how we feel and what we'll probably look like when we come home, hahahaha!)




and once again ended our evening drinking wine and listening/requesting live music at Donny Doolan’s. And Melanie became known as Ms. America by the guitarist himself because of all of her American song requests. All and all, we had a great time in Auckland with our new friends who we feel like we’ve known for years and of course great food and drink!









p.s. Scroll down to see more newly added pictures of our trip!!