today we had originally planned to continue on with our travels but instead we are pausing in auckland to take care of some things. most importantly, leaving behind some of our stuff to make our packs lighter. we did laundry as well. since we are seeing the country with only 2 sets of clothes now, they were quite filthy and needed a proper wash. also used the big city opportunity for a good internet connection and caught up on email and blogging. the rest of what we did was just extra. one of those things was having breakfast at this vegetarian/vegan friendly place that is always closed whenever we stop by. not this morning baby. bagel with hummus and tomato. hot chocolate with soy milk. yum yum.

we missed lunch and were starving when dinner time rolled around. went to burger wisconsin. damn their burgers are huge. i had a falafel burger. i had to cut it in half. after i ate half, i realized i should've taken a picture of it 'cos it's so huge.

careful, this burger is strictly a two hands experience

then we wanted to do a couple tourist things that we didn't while we were living in auckland. we went to sky tower. instead of taking pictures of sky tower, i was finally taking pictures from sky tower. the ride up the elevator to the main observation deck was cool because the elevator had a glass bottom so you could watch the ascent. i filmed it but afterwards i realized i should have been practicing hitchcock's "vertigo" effect! (zooming in as the camera pulls away) some parts of the main observation deck (equivalent to floor 52 kiwi - 186m) also had a glass bottom. you know you are safe but walking on that thing is freaky. you just feel nervous and try to be still. i didn't dare jump! we were at sky tower for sunset, which was nice.

instead of toilet seat covers, kiwis have wipes

we paid the extra $3 to go to the higher deck called sky deck (equivalent to floor 60 kiwi - 220m). sky tower is supposed to have the tallest observation deck in the southern hemisphere. i wasn't sure which deck counted as the highest one so i wanted to go up that extra level. then i realized that the highest deck was probably this other one which is part of the vertigo trip. if you pay even more money, you put on an orange jumpsuit, climb the core of the building, then go out to the very top observation deck (270m). hmm, can we say rip off?

after the sky tower nonsense, we attempted to return to stardome observatory to use our ticket good for viewing out the telescopes since last time we went it was rainy and were unable to use the telescopes. well, someone or something didn't want us to go. we just couldn't catch the right bus out there in time. personally, i blame rideline. their web site for finding the right bus is pretty crappy, but the net enabled phone interface is utter crap. we must've wasted about 3 hours of our night waiting for the bus, then running around to different bus stops, then taking the wrong bus, then waiting for a bus just to get back to the hostel because it would be the last bus running--no time for the observatory! in this case, not having a car sucks big time.