Qantas – World After Work

Saturday, 23rd February saw us take flight once again. We were flying Qantas to Auckland. This would be our 8th stop of the 15 permitted on our RTW ticket, so a halfway point in a sense.

There was a little excitement in the air as we arrived in New Zealand because, as luck would have it, our initial brief stay in Auckland coincided with a decent size poker tournament with a NZD 500 buy in, which is around GBP 250. This was a single day tournament so it fitted perfectly with our schedule. We were planning only two nights in Auckland before flying south to Christchurch as part of our extensive tour of New Zealand.

The SkyCity Casino was hosting the tournament so, for convenience, we stayed at the SkyCity Grand Hotel. We arrived in the early evening so didn’t get much chance to explore the city. The one sight we did see, since it was slap bang between the hotel and casino, was the Sky Tower.

This is yet another tower built on exactly the same lines as the Stratosphere in Vegas and the Macau tower which we photographed back in January. We made it our mission to find out who was first.

The Macau Tower was completed in 2001 and is 338m high. Auckland’s Sky Tower was completed in 1997 and is 328m high. The Stratosphere Tower was completed first, in 1996 and is the tallest, at 350.2m. I’m sure that will settle lots of arguments around family dinner tables.

We called it a night at this point – there’s only so much excitement we can handle – and rested ourselves in preparation for Sunday’s tournament.

We had breakfast in a place just next door to our hotel – and across the road from the casino’s front door – called the Federal Deli, which was delicious. We registered promptly for the 12:30pm start and, like so many tournaments, it started a half hour late. Also in common with many tournaments, I busted out early and it was left to Ishbel to fly the flag for Scotland. There were 70 entries in the end and a five figure sum was on offer for the eventual winner. They were paying only 8 places in the tournament, so Ishbel was disappointed to eventually bust out of the tournament in 11th place.

After she finished, we had a late dinner and since we’d enjoyed breakfast there so much, we went back to the Federal Deli again.

So almost all of our Auckland activity took place in one small street in the centre of town. And that’s why this post is mostly unillustrated.

The following morning we re-packed our gear and stowed a suitcase and both instruments at a storage facility called The Luggage Hotel. We would be moving around a lot for the next week or so and decided to travel light. Then it was off to the airport for a budget one-way flight to Christchurch. Ishbel’s camera should be back in action for the rest of the trip.

After our bluegrass adventure of Wednesday, it was time to take our leave of Tokyo and Japan on Thursday. We packed up and checked our bags at the hotel. The flight to Australia wasn’t due to depart until early evening so we decided to make up for having missed out on it the previous Wednesday by going to see the Teien Art Museum. You may recall that this is an art deco mansion which was the former residence of Prince Asaka, a son-in-law of Emperor Meiji (discussed in depth in this post) and uncle of Emperor Hirohito. He was a fan of the art deco style and so are we so this place was a perfect fit for a visit.

This is the place from the outside.

That’s all we saw. Apparently it’s not open at the moment as it’s setting up for a special exhibition starting at the end of the month. I’m going to have to learn to read Japanese. The gardens were open so we had a stroll around them for a while and visited the teahouse that was built at the same time as the house.

Nice teahouse, but not on its own worth the 25 minute train ride. And thus ended the Asian leg of the trip. We took the train back to the centre of Tokyo, picked up our luggage from the hotel, and took the Narita Express train out to the airport. We still had plenty of time before our flight so we looked into taking the bus to the airport for only JPY 1,000 each but the catch was you are only allowed one suitcase. You can’t even pay for an additional bag, so we wouldn’t have been able to get both our cases and the dobro on the bus, so the train it was destined to be.

Qantas was easier than BA to deal with and we had already checked in to our seats – 5A and 6A – for the flight to Brisbane. Flat beds and big screens when we got on board. In a fit of nostalgia, I re-watched Blazing Saddles on the flight. A classic.

Australasia for the next month, which is largely unplanned at the moment so we’ll see what happens.