Auckland

The weather for our second visit to Auckland is better. Although there is intermittent rain, there is no State of Emergency and businesses are open.

In Wellington, harbor watching consisted of the comings and goings of the two large (one white, one blue) inter-island ferries, two smaller ferries servicing the far side of the bay, and the rare arrival or departure of commercial vessels and the movement of tugboats to guide them.

Here is Auckland, we are staying at the Intercontinental by IHG. The hotel is on Quay St., the road along the water. There are few buildings on the other side of the street, EXCEPT for the historic building just across the street.

Our room's field of view provides us the constant movement of the "ferry circus". Just below our room, at least ten ferries operate. They come and go constantly, often arriving together and forming a queue or ferry gridlock.

Since Movida has inexplicably permanently closed, we return to Ebisu, the place just below it, for dinner. The Indian sake master has been replaced by a Japanese woman sake master. She is better and steers us to two very good sake. How do we know she knows her stuff? CJ shows her pictures of various sake we enjoyed on our latest Japan trip, she instantly picked out the "super expensive" one. We have a 180ml of the Denshin Rin Junmai Daiginjo before moving to a bottle of the Dassai 39 Junmai Daiginjo. The woman determines that the style we like is Daiginjo. Previously we knew what we liked but not what we preferred. 

It's the last full day in New Zealand of this holiday. It is another unsettled day with periods of sun mixed with rain. This time some of the rain is accompanied by lightning.

By early afternoon the rain has passed and a beautiful day breaks out. We continue to pass the day in the hotel. Even a spell of decent weather doesn't stimulate a desire to explore.