Early Daze
SARAHS VIEW:
So, today was pretty farkin funny – well *I* think it was anyways!!!
The morning began innocently enough.
Woke up without an alarm, a phone ringing, or nagging animals. (bonus!!!)
Coffee, then got the hotel shuttle bus to the airport to go pick up our hire car.
Then off to “Countdown”, which as it turns out, is actually our version of Woolies, including the very same shop logo.
Well here is when OUR entertainment began.
Aisle 2 (see photo) had – I kid you not – Health Foods, Cereal, and…BOOZE!!!!
Ok, even tho it was waaaaay before lunch – we were pretty excited!!!
Into the trolley (our Aussie word for those things we push around the supermarket), goes a case of seriously cheap Corona beer!!!
Next aisle, in goes some much needed coffee, cos we’d only bought enough with us for the first morning..
Then some milk for the coffee, and working out which one to get took some doing!
Next – chocolate.
Then some burger rings…
Our trolley was looking a lil embarrassing I gotta admit!!
Alrighty, so we had discussed previously that we wanted to buy an esky, so that when we drove from place to place, we could keep our goodies cool…
So once we were done at Countdown, we went to The Warehouse.
Now you guys think you KNOW what’s at the usual Warehouse, but let me just say, you soooooooo DON’T!!!!!
This place was friggin HUGE, and covered every damn thing except live animals and cold groceries!!!
We wandered round a bit, and I fell in love with a lounge suite along the way.
Suzey fell in love with it next, and now we’re wondering how to get this massive, amazingly comfy, super cheap corner suite back to Australia!!
Noooooo – we didn’t buy it….
(Yet!)
We wandered round some more, looking like stunned tourists – cos we were!!
Then decided we had best actually do we we had come into the store to do!
Suzey headed off to homewares/camping, looking for an esky.
I went to the Telecom phone place, to get a sim for the phone.
I’d had a – let’s just call it rather ugly – “experience” the previous night at the Airport with a telecom dealer (yes, im gonna use the racially prejudiced curry-muncher tag!!) and it hadn’t gone so well, so I’d decided to wait for today to get the new sim for the phone.
(I swear they breed phone sales people in Bombay, who’s sole intent in life is to FUCK ME OFF!!)
Anyways…. I got off track…..Sorry!!!
Got the sim, all sorted.
Did it so easily and quickly, with this nice Kiwi chicky, that I decided I might as well make use of her store knowledge 🙂
Sweetly, (in case Suzey hadn’t had any luck), I asked her where the eskys were please?
Welllllllll….
She looked at me then, like i’d just fallen out of the asylum truck!
What???? Said she.
An ESKY, says I…. (Insert quick thinking) …..
Ummm….. A cooler box…?
a TOILET BOX????? Says she – at the top of her lungs!!!!’
Reallllllly looking at me now like I’m getting more retarded by the minute… ~sigh~
Ohhhhh fark…..”NO —-> a COOLER BOX!!!
You know, a plastic box with a lid that you put ice in to keep food cold!!!”
“Ohhhhhh….”, she chuckles at the gathering store attendants, now listening in too, you mean a CHILLY BIN!?!??
Yup, yup, sure I do….!
So, do you have a chilly bin????
Nooooo – they’re a seasonal thing sorry ma’am, we don’t have em at this time of year.
Good grief – slink off, then dissolve into gales of laughter when Suzey and I meet back up, and as it turns out she has a similar story!!!
So, we then have something to eat, and do a lil more wandering, then decide to go back to the hotel for a “loo break”…
We leave the shops, and head for the car, looking for somewhere to dump the trolley.
We then spot the sign: “Leave your trundle here”
Trundle? TRUNDLE?? ohhhkaaaayyyy…
(photo op #3 lol – I’ll post that pic later maybe…)
Once we are back, and we have our mornings business taken care of, we decide to head into the actual city of Auckland, which is about 20kms away.
Into car, head north – and the sky opens up with, what the weather man later describes as, torrential rain, gale force winds, and surface flooding!
We’ve driven for about 90 mins, have nooooo farkin idea where we are, can’t see more than 20 feet in front of us, and are now at the ‘hungry again’ point.
Find a sign that heads us towards to airport (our hotel is only 3kms from the airport) and get back on that road.
Lunch is had at the same cafe we had breakfast – yep, right next to Countdown and The Warehouse.
Gives US a giggle, even if no one else would find it humerous!!!
During lunch, I sooooooo had to pee, but got sidetracked, and didn’t get to it.
Welllllll – by the time we got back to the hotel, I was bouncing up and down like a three year old, and Suzey took sooooo long to open the room door, that my eyes were starting to leak!!!
Now, the design of the bathroom is a lil odd…
The loo is in the back right hand corner of the room, but its across the corner.
By that, I mean that the tank of the loo, is diagonally across the actual corner of the room. I don’t know if you can visualise this, but its just not the ‘norm’…
So, Suzey opens the hotel room door (finally!!!), and once she’s vaguely in the door, I push thru behind her, and duck straight into the toilet, push the door with a good shove, and start yanking my jeans down as I head towards to loo.
The door slams shut – and FUCK ME ITS PITCH BLACK!!!
I can’t find the god-damn fucking toilet, and the light hasn’t come on!
Hobble (cos my jeans are round my knees!) back in the direction I think the door is in…grope wall for light switch, flick it, and nothing happens!!!
Yank back open door: “put the fucking card in the slot!!!” yells me.
It’s one of those rooms where you have no power, unless the key card is in a slot in the wall.
Aggghhhhhh!!!!!!
At that point – things are going badly sideways….
I almost have pee running down my leg I am busting sooooo bad, and now – to cap it all off – I get a seriously bad case of the giggles, AND my jeans are now in a knot around my ankles, AND I still haven’t landed on the toilet!!!
Suffice to say, that despite being almost beyond breathing, with my fits of giggles, i finally manage to land on the loo without injury, and thankfully – my jeans AND the floor are all still dry….. Ahhhh, pure utter relief!
It did take me about 10 full minutes to finally wind down from the constantly re-erupting giggles though…
We passed the rest of the afternoon just relaxinging and spending time together – talking, reading, researching – just enjoying being together.
The day did have a bit of a smudge on it though….
We had decided to get room service for dinner.
Room service is a bit of a loose term really though.
You have to go down from the third floor to the Lobby restaurant (no, you may NOT phone your order through Ma’am), and order what you want, then schlep back to your room, they phone your room when its ready, and you schlep back down from the third floor to the lobby, to retrieve said meal and take it back to your own room yourself…
Like i said – room service is a bit of a loose term…..
So, at 7:45pm, we order 1 x burger & chips.
Said burger is on unbuttered panini bread, has two (tasty) patties, a slice of tomatoe, a large dose of lettuce, a wee lil shred of lost onion, and a blob of aioli.
Well, at 9:05, when there still hasn’t been a phone call, were getting just a tad annoyed – so off we go to the lobby.
Of course Suzey attends to this lil matter – cos we know it’ll not go so well if i do it – maybe…
Suzey will give her version of what happened, but after almost another 20mins, it resulted in the meal being returned, a new one being delivered, and it STILL wasn’t up to par!!
TripAdvisor AND the hotel will be getting some feedback from us both on this….
We will be heading north tomorrow to the Bay of Isles, so will let you know how that goes in a few days.
Two things i know for absolute sure –
1: we will laugh — a LOT
2: and we will both thoroughly love being together and getting to spend time on US.
I’m a happy lucky grrl 🙂