New Zealand
The flight crew was nice enough to share some of their cake (Torrance Bakery FTW!) in addition to the very decent tomato and kale pastry for breakfast, shortly before some decent bumps due to Tropical Cyclone Lola, still lingering north of Auckland. At least the grey skies and rain failed to dampen the arrival celebration, with a larger troupe of local dancers on arrival, plus a brief set of photos with the inaugural flight crew and local staff. Didn't see any photos outside but considering the rain, the lack of photos made sense.
The JW Marriott Auckland is currently under a badly-needed renovation did not do much there aside from sleeping and a bit of work, but made the time for Scratch Bakery's superb pork and cider meat pie. Like most other places on this trip, they had a ton of other delicious items aside from the meat pies, but due to lack of stomach space I had to refrain from more. The saved stomach space instead was for Lobster & Tap at Auckland Fish Market, which did a great lobster roll. The fish market has a couple of other restaurants and an actual fishmonger, so was quite a nice little stop. There's apparently a Chinese restaurant across the way as well, but they honestly didn't look like much, and by this point I was pretty full.
Did some wine shopping in there somewhere (Cahn and Finlay is a charming if small shop packed with good wine, Glengarry is a much larger shop also with a decent selection), then went on a decently long stroll over to Ponsonby for drinks and dinner. Bedford Soda and Liquour is still good after all these years, they had a raspberry ripple for drink of the day that hit the spot. Dinner was at another place in Ponsonby Central, Argentinian food at El Sizzling Chorizo. Was not very impressed by the beef or lamb, but the pork wasn't bad, and it was a massive portion.
Took a different route back to the hotel, through tree-lined suburban streets that felt very much like residential neighborhoods in Santa Monica or similar. Not a bad little walk, and felt less guilty about eating so much today after walking more than 5 miles/8 kilometers.