Waiheke Island

It’s Monday so I guess it’s time for a new blog. Did you know it was Father’s Day over here yesterday? No? I also didn’t know until I went to a hi-fi store (sort of Foto Klein) the other day with my roommate Nick to get him a new camera and they had all these Father’s Day deals. Apparently they celebrate Father’s Day on the first Sunday of September in Australia and New Zealand. So for the second time this year; happy Father’s Day dad. But enough about that let me tell you something about my week. Well, the week itself wasn’t very exciting. I spend most of the time working on my laptop and enjoying the beautiful rainy weather outside looking through my window.
And because I’ve heard it rained a lot as well back home in The Netherlands (what a surprise) I won’t bother anyone with stories about more rain.

Let me skip to the weekend, beginning with Friday. My roommates and I didn’t really feel like cooking so we decided to get some diner in a restaurant. Three hungry young men looking for a nice place to eat in a big city, that wouldn’t be that hard you would say. Well it turned out it was. You have to know since there are a lot of Asian people living in the city centre, there are also a lot of Asian restaurants over here. If you like that kind of food (like my roommates do) than you would be more than okay to find a good place to eat over here. For those who know me good enough will know I don’t really like to eat food like that, because my intestines don’t really process that all too well. And Nils suffers from lactose intolerance so you can understand it took us quite a while to find a restaurant we were all happy with. Eventually I gave in and we went to this Chinese restaurant that didn’t look too bad. The food tasted good, but I wasn’t so happy with it the other day, so next time I probably won’t join my roommates for dinner in a similar restaurant.
After dinner we decided to get back to the apartment and have some beers, play card games and get some sleep, because there was an active day awaiting us on Saturday.

My roommates and I decided to take the ferry to Waiheke Island this Saturday. The day before we asked on WhatsApp and Facebook if there were any other interns who would like to join us to Waiheke Island. It turned out there was someone, a Dutch girl named Jacqueline. We would meet up with her at Britomart close to the harbour before getting on to the ferry. When the four of us arrived at the Pier the ferry was just about to leave so we had to hurry to get our ticket and get on board. Hardly on board of the ferry it took off to Waiheke Island. During this trip there were some good opportunities to take some nice photos, but because of the waves and the wind it turned out to be quite difficult sometimes to take a decent picture. Luckily I managed to get at least a couple of good pictures (if I may say so myself). After like 30 minutes we arrived at Waiheke Island. Fully prepared (haha not) we began our adventure on this beautiful island. With no idea where to go to and no idea what to do we decided to explore the island by foot and try to get to a couple of the beaches. Fortunately the weather was good today and also quite warm sometimes. They say the temperature on Waiheke Island is generally a couple of degrees warmer than in Auckland. After a few minutes I came to realise I forgot to put on my other shoes that are more made for walking than the ones I had on. I have to remember that the next time we decide to do a similar activity. There were many great tracker routes on the island that took us to some beautiful lookout points and other great places. I can bore you with detailed information about the paths we took and the many great views, but I think it’s better you just check out the photos (on my Facebook page you can find more photos) and see how beautiful Waiheke Island is.
We or at least I will definitely go back to Waiheke Island one day in the summer to see the rest of the island, because even though we have seen quite a lot we haven’t seen the half of it.

This was my blog about my second week here in Auckland. I hope you enjoyed it. I will get you updated by my next blog and my Facebook page. Cheers!