December 28, 2023 – January 1, 2024

Our first full day in New Zealand would turn out to be an exciting one, with a long and exciting e-bike tour in the morning capped off by a nice dinner and then trying to manage to stay awake until midnight.  It was a challenge all around but a good one and by and large, we were successful.  Marty had booked our bike tour with R and R Adventures and the owner, Gordon agreed to meet us at the condo to transport us and the bikes to our starting point in Auckland Domain, a large city park that is also home to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. 

Thus, would begin six weeks full of guided tours, most often booked through Trip Advisor and their subsidiary, Viator.  As we had no transportation of our own and wanted to see as much as possible in both countries we would be visiting, booking half day and full day tours turned out to be the best option for maximizing our experience.  In the past Joanna and I rarely paid for tours, generally relying on guidebooks to get us to a place of interest.  In the end though this tour methodology would work out well for all of us. 

After parking at the Auckland Domain, we got the bikes ready, put on our helmets and started out on the tour, which would turn out to be not exactly what I envisioned a city tour would encompass.  I don’t think Gordon has a standard route set up for this tour, instead playing it by ear depending on who shows up and their level of fitness and particular sights they might want to see.  And that would lead us into some difficult places and sections to ride, with fairly technical twists and turns that in the end would lead to four of the five of us getting injured in some fashion. 

I was the first to go down as we approached a steep hill, I was in lower e-power and figured I’d just use the bikes gears to get me up the grade.  When I shifted, it missed the shift causing me to lurch off the saddle and when I went to plant my left leg to stabilize, the weight of the bike (50 or pounds) pushed me over and I landed on my left side, lightly banging my helmeted head on the street curb.  We would later discover that the missed shift was due to a badly repaired shifter cable, but this wouldn’t be my last encounter with badly maintained rental bikes.   

As for the others, Bev would slash her left arm open on a bridge railing, Marty would tangle with some nasty bougainvillea, and Kim would crash off a narrow-elevated path in wooded area with a father and son coming in the opposite direction that proved too difficult to maneuver past.  But, even with all of that, it was a fun and sometimes spectacular ride, one that took us all the way to the harbor and even back to where Kim had crashed so that we could, quite luckily, recover her phone which had slipped out of her pocket during her encounter with the undergrowth. 

And we got lucky at the end as the skies that had been threatening all day opened just as we were climbing back to Auckland Domain, where we huddled in the van drinking sodas and homemade cookies and brownies Gordon and his wife provided.  In the end we covered twenty-eight miles of a big part of Auckland and would come away with a bunch of memories to share. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon getting cleaned up, relaxing and enjoying a pre-dinner glass or two of some form of alcoholic beverage.  At the appointed hour, we all took off for Portofino for dinner, just a few blocks away on Parnell.  One of many locations in this local chain, we chose it for our ability to get a last-minute reservation on New Year’s Eve and for its generally positive reviews, although some dinged the level of service, which as it would turn out would not be the case for us, it being efficient, attentive and friendly. 

As usual we started with drinks, a glass of wine for me, a Sex on the Beach for Bev, and a Japanese Slipper (Midori, Cointreau & Lemon Juice) for Joanna along with two orders of their delightful, toasted bread.  For entrees, Bev went with the Rigatoni Amarticia (bacon, onion & garlic pan fried in extra virgin olive oil with pomodoro sauce & Italian parsley), Joanna the Calamari, and for me the Scaloppine Marsala (white veal with sweet marsala sauce, served with seasonal vegetables & potato). 

Overall, the food was excellent, with my veal all I could have hoped for as often the marsala sauce can be overly sweet or cloying.  Here it held just the right balance between the slightly sweet character of Marsala wine but brought forth the nuttiness one often finds in that ingredient.  The pasta dishes were cooked just right, the sauces rich and satisfying with leftovers consumed the next day.  And we polished off a bottle of Trinity Hill Sarah out of Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.  It was the start of drinking nothing but locally produced wine the whole trip.  Best of all was the final tab, 333NZ ($216) for the table or roughly 66NZ ($42) per person.  When was the last time you had cocktails, entrees and a bottle of wine for that reasonable amount of a charge?

We returned to the Airbnb and did exactly what we would do at home on New Year’s Eve, that is we struggled to stay awake until midnight.  I’d been able to log into the unit’s Apple TV, so we were able kill time, but some amount of napping ensued until the bewitching hour when we gathered on the balcony off the front room and welcomed the new year in as we watched the fireworks display near downtown.  What a great way to start our trip and the new year. 

Links

R and R Adventures: https://randradventures.co.nz/

Portofino: https://www.portofino.co.nz/parnell/