Our final night in NZ, we decided to splurge on a suite in downtown Auckland. We found the most bizarre “champagne and strawberries” deal online, and booked a room at the historic Heritage Auckland – a 1920s Art Deco style department store that was converted into a hotel.
I don’t have any photos of our last day in Auckland – a combination of stupidity and another hard drive crash erased pictures taken during this time frame. All I really have are memories of that day and night — having a guy at a non-starbucks tell me that they couldn’t make me a tea latte becuase ‘they were not starbucks,’ sleeping in a ‘real’ bed, cleaning the campervan, drinking champagne and eating strawberries with hokie pokie sauce, watching music videos on tv, hanging out in the rooftop hot tub, exploring the streets of Auckland at night, eating amazing sushi, listening to a guy with a guitar sing ballads on the outdoor patio of our restaurant, finally having fresh new zealand oysters, and enjoying the last moments of our honeymoon together.
(Photos above taken as stills from the only few videos that survived from that day).On our flight back, I almost caused an international incident when I asked if I could have my super 8 film hand-inspected rather than run through the xray machine. The Auckland airport went nuts,a and brought out their bomb sniffing dog. On the positive, because there were like 10 screening checkpoints, we were able to bypass the long lines and get escorted through security by the dog. Note to self: don’t travel internationally with motion film.
I don’t even know how to sum up such an amazing trip. Photos and words cannot even scratch the surface of such a significant and memorable period in our lives – a beautiful wedding followed by an awesome honeymoon. It was truly better than we could have ever dreamed.
