Two more beautiful days in Auckland

Wow--I'm hoping that God saves a little more of this weather for the rest of our time here and isn't just giving us all of it in one big dose. It has been amazing!

The days here continue to fly by--there are just far too many things to do (and that's just in Auckland--the rest of the country still awaits!) Yesterday was pretty low key. We headed out in the mid morning and walked up "the big hill" to Parnell. Once there we checked out a few of the cafes and shops and finally settled into lunch at the Alphabet Bistro which proved to be quite good with interesting twists on lunch (e.g., I had the Mediterranean BLT which was pancetta, tomatoes, lettuce, and shaved parmesan on sourdough drizzled with some kind of balsamic--yum!) Since he day was beautiful we sat outside and were enjoying ourselves so much we had to stay a little longer for cappuccino. Of course that's when I realized that I had left diapers at home. Thus we decided to head back to the apartment for a bit before continuing the rest of the day's plans.


View from the top of the "big hill" heading into Parnell


Once we had picked up the necessities we headed up to Greenlane Hospital which is the private hospital where Josh will be spending some time while here (most of his time will be at the public Auckland City Hospital. We went up there to meet a couple of the people who have been helping Josh make all the arrangements to be here. Like everyone else here, they were super friendly. They suggested that we use the afternoon to visit One Tree Hill which was just down the road. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Cornwall Park (which was beautiful) and managed to successfully trek to the top of One Tree Hill for the amazing views (see pic below. By the time we made it down it was practically dark so we hurried to catch the Link bus back home (which proved to be a long haul since we apparently jumped on clearly opposite of the side of the "loop" where we would be hopping off!)





Views from the top of One Tree Hill

Greenlane Hospital

Liam running around in the wide open spaces

Cool tree in Cornwall Park

Today we headed out to Waiheke(Why-hee-kee)Island for the day. Took the ferry out there and enjoyed a short tour followed by a picnic lunch on the beach, a glass of wine in a cafe, and a trip to one of the many, many vineyards out here. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves on this one. It was breathtaking and we will definitely be back.