Ward Family Vacations

As you all know Dave is a school teacher and works Monday through Friday and since he takes their only car to work, Jessica and I had to walk or bus anywhere we went. Jessica and Dave had only lived in New Lynn, Auckland for a month and Jessica had not learned her way around yet. She had me up at the crack of dawn on Monday morning because she was ready to explore. I made her put on my coffee and then we got dressed and ready to get out.

The first day (Monday, August 15th) we walked to the Lynn Mall which is approximately a one mile walk. The prices appear to be a little higher, however, the US Dollar is worth a little more so it all evens out. For instance, they do not have Dollar Stores, they have $2 Stores. Or my favorites, the $1, $2, $3 Dollar store (where everything was $3 dollars!). My favorite store was "Farmer's" a

department store with great merchandise and even better buys. I really loved the walking and you catch so much that you miss when driving by. We stayed around New Lynn the first day and found several thrift stores and stopped at Jessica's favorite store "The Warheouse" which is like our KMart.

Bryan put in his order for "All Black's" items, New Zealand's World Cup rugby team. I do not know if you have ever watched rugby but it is similar to our football with the exception that the players wear shorts and no padding! The All Blacks team of New Zealand is a favorite of all. This season they are currently 22-5 with 1 draw. Before each game, the team does the Maori Haka or war dance It sure fires up the crowd! Of course, Adidas is their sponsor, so I did not find any "low end" items.

Here is a You Tube link to an Adidas ad with the team performing their Haka before one of their games. It really gets the crowd fired up.

On Tuesday, we decided to try to the bus system (the New Lynn Transport Center is directly across from the Mall). We figured if we got lost really bad, we could just call Dave and he could pick us up on his way home from work. Once we discovered the buses and figured out the routes it was all over! We took the buses out to the Henderson Westfield Mall which was larger than New Lynn. We had a great time there and ate at one the kiosks in the mall, "Subway!" A foot long sandwich with a drink was around $13, but comparatively it was the same price as in the U.S. We bussed out to Lincoln Road which was past Henderson Westfield to go to the Spotlight Fabric Store. Jessica had a new sewing machine and wanted new curtains for her kitchen and cushions for their new couch. We ate that day at a little store near Spotlight. By the third day we had discovered "Shopper's passes" for the bus system where we could travel anywhere in Auckland between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm for $5 each. (A one stage ticket was $1.30 each one way and several of the places we went (like Spotlight) were 2 stages one way. There are tons of small strips of small specialty stores. We would just take the bus until we found some stores we liked and get off and shop and pick the bus back up when we got tired of shopping.

We shopped and bussed all over Auckland the first week. We ate at all different kinds of places and one day Jessica made me her "Chicken Teriyaki Sushi" she had been raving about. The chicken teriyaki was good and I liked the rice, but I wasn't much on the "seaweed wraps". We had a great time and walked at least 2-3 miles every day. I normally as I have gotten older had trouble sometimes getting to sleep at night but since we exercised by walking so far every day, I slept like a baby at night.