Auckland – Day 2

Back home in the T-dot they’re tearing up the concrete floors of the parking lot beneath me. The noise is so bad that I’ve moved my car to my mom’s place and refused my monthly car payment in protest. So imagine how thrilled I was to wake up to the sounds of hotel renovation a couple of floors above me. Actually that’s not true — I wasn’t woken up the noise because I never really feel asleep…

I headed downstairs for my first complimentary breakfast only to find the hotel restaurant full of golf shirts and bad khakis — apparently there’s some kind of conference going on at the convention centre across the street.

Despite the crowds I received prompt coffee refills until I unknowingly did something to piss my waitress off, after which she made a point of carrying her urn of black gold to every table but mine. I left her a generous tip anyway; maybe tomorrow we can be friends again.

Then it was back to the gym, and may I just say that it would be nice for someone else to have to stare at my tight ass for a change…

Here’s yours truly towering over Auckland in the Sky Tower’s Sky Deck. The photo was taken by a lovely couple from Hamilton (New Zealand, not Ontario).

From this vantage point I confirmed that there was more to the city’s waterfront than I seen the day before. That’s Harbour Bridge in the Background. You can bungee jump off of it, but that’s not surprising — you can bungee off of pretty much anything in this town.

I’m not kidding — you can even jump off of the Sky Tower! Just aim for that tiny red target at street level below.

Here’s another view of the Crowne Plaza. Click on the photo to see the Auckland Museum in the background, courtesy of Flickr. I’m holding out for Te Papa in Wellington.

Before I knew it the lunch hour arrived, so I took the opportunity to sample my first meat pie, from Pie Mania. This one was steak and cheese, and delicious!

Here’s something I haven’t seen since my first trip to Tokyo — a Toyota WiLL. I saw an ad on TV last night where a car salesman said something about being able to import vehicles directly from Japan. If this is true, Kiwi drivers are a lucky bunch indeed…

En route back to the waterfront I stopped by the Victoria Park Market. It’s pretty much a tourist trap.

A handy feature for visitors to Auckland is maps like this one. They’re on almost every corner in the downtown core.

The south end of the waterfront features high end hotels, snazzy restaurants and these harbour-facing condos, which I’m sure are very affordable…

A segregated Auckland?! Not quite — it’s the name of the national rugby team. Don’t think I’ll be bringing any official merchandise home, though.

Despite their festive headgear these asshats sold me possibly the worst salad of my entire adult life. That’s what you get when you try to save a buck on dinner…

Requiem for a Smoothie

In case you were worried that this blog was turning into a smartphones-only destination, here’s something a bit different…

Since my birthday last April I’ve lost about 20 lbs. Yay me. Anyhoo, the way I’ve been doing it is to find healthier substitutes for the crap I usually eat, like replacing a side of fries with a salad, a tub of chocolate almonds with a small handful — that kind of thing.

Stepping in for my summer milkshake fetish have been these awesome low calorie fruit smoothies from Danone. And for someone who lives dangerously close to both a McDonald’s and a Baskin-Robbins they’ve been an absolute godsend!

So imagine my dismay when the product started disappearing from local supermarkets. My first reaction was that they were flying off the shelves due to their popularity — I often had to settle for the wild berries flavour (blech!) because the vastly superior strawberry-orange-banana combo was nowhere to be found.

But my worst fears were confirmed when an email query sent to Danone was promptly answered with this:

Unfortunately, Silhouette Smoothie is no longer available because the sales volume no longer justified production.

I would have thought that my eight bucks a week would have been enough to keep the product line in the black, but apparently not. And the problem is that there’s really nothing comparable. I could drink Yop but their TV ads terrify me:

In desperation I even tried Danone’s smoothie for kids, but the damn portions are too small — what’s that about?!

If anyone knows of a comparable product available in Canada please let me know. In the meantime I guess I’ll have to make do with regular yogurt like the rest of you philistines…

Brazilian BBQ Madness!

Today I present a photo journey through the excess that was my dinner last night at The Red Violin on the Danforth in Toronto. For those of you who’ve never experienced a Brazilian Rodizio, read on and be amazed…

Yup, you guessed it — this is merely the appetizer plate from the salad bar! Hey, at least I didn’t fill up on bread…

Once we signaled our waitress the relentless parade of meat began. Here’s what we all agreed was the tastiest cut.

Ray Deonandan, the evil evil man who brought me here.

I’m pretty sure I was the first to cry “uncle” — I just wish I’d done it a few tens of ounces sooner.

The meal comes to a halt only when a patron holds up this red card like so. Then it’s time for dessert barbeque. I’m not kidding!

Pretty soon the entire table was seeing red…

If I do ever go back to one of these places I’ll be way more selective about what I put in my mouth, which is probably good advice to follow whether you’re at a Brazilian BBQ or not!