January 9, 2014
My morning began with a surprising realization. I have a little thought exercise I tend to do on special occasions, basically musing on where the ultimate place to spend this day would be. It’s not always the same place, but it’s also pretty much never where we are. Except this year. I thought about where it would be fun to be, and the answer was quick: right here!
This wasn’t because Bayswater Marina was a particularly special place. It was more about the circumstances at the time. Aside from being in an area fairly new to us, we were near an exciting city that we hoped to get to know better, and we had the time to devote to doing just that. I had fun things planned for the night (dinner at the Sky Tower), for the month ahead (outings in the greater Auckland area), for the month after that (cruising the beautiful Hauraki Gulf), followed by a stay in another city we enjoy (Tauranga). After that, we had plans to sail off to the tropics (destination undecided) for the winter.
I guess the magic formula for this particularly contented birthday was being amidst lots of novelty interspersed with things we already knew and liked and things I looked forward to doing in both the near and distant future. That balance of familiarity vs novelty can be a fine line between monotony, excitement and stress, and I hoped to stay balanced on this line for as long as possible. With this lifestyle we don’t have much monotony (although we do go through occasional burnout phases that make things feel monotonous). Usually the undesired feeling is stress, but that comes with the territory. For now, we didn’t have anything stressful on the horizon, and things were going along nicely.
Actually I might have stressed Rich out some with my dinner plan. I’d been wanting to visit Auckland’s Sky Tower and its two observation decks, but like most sky towers, the price was high enough to give us pause. But they had a deal: if a person went there for dinner, both the Observation Deck and the higher Sky Deck were free of charge for a 45-minute time period.
I’d made a plan for us to arrive just before sunset and spend the 45 minutes watching the evening deepen over Auckland, then have dinner at Orbit 360, the tower’s revolving restaurant, while enjoying views of the city lights. Meanwhile I’d assured Rich that the reviews of this restaurant were very good, but he wasn’t convinced. It was my birthday, though, and this dinner experience was the present I wanted. He made the reservation.
While dinner was the big plan for the day, we did make an afternoon trip to Auckland to seek out a very special Asian food court, and one place in particular called Yong’s Hand Pulled Noodles. Thankfully we got there early as the line ended up pretty long. When we got our food we could see the reason for the lines: those noodles and the food were fabulous. One of the dishes we’d had was so spicy it left our mouths numb, but we cooled off with Thai milk tea with bobas from another vendor. Yong’s ended up being one of our favorite New Zealand eateries, and it was fun to have our first visit happen on my birthday.
Later we returned to the downtown area and its SkyCity complex. We started by taking elevators to the Sky Deck, the highest deck. What an incredible view we had as the sun was just setting. We walked around the deck with 360 degree views of the city, watching the lights start to wink on. From there we went down the elevator three floors to the Observation Deck and more fantastic views. I actually preferred the views from the Observation Deck as it was lower and closer to the tops of the buildings, giving us the feeling of flying over them. By the time we went back up a floor to the restaurant, the night had settled in.
The hostess led us to our windowside table. The lights in the restaurant were kept low and the city lights spread out below us made a dazzling display. We ordered a bread and spreads appetizer and some champagne for me, then Rich had the goat cheese souffle and I had the steak, both of which we split. Both meals were fantastic. We had a Valrhona chocolate dish for dessert, and I had more champagne. By the time we finished, the restaurant had made one complete revolution and given us city views in every direction.
Below, a gallery of photos from our Sky Tower visit (click to enlarge and scroll through photos).
And a zoomed-in view of our Bayswater Marina. No, we couldn’t quite pick out our boat in this photo.
In all, this made for an incredible evening and even years later, we consider this one of highlights of our time in New Zealand. Rich loved it so much he did his own post about it at the time: Auckland Skytower and Orbit 360 Restaurant. Note for anyone who might want to visit this restaurant: this place gets booked up; so make a reservation ahead of time. –Cyndi
