After catching the City Circuit back to the CBD, we spent the remainder of our daylight looking around downtown and souvenir-shopping, mostly along Queen Street. As one would expect in a country so full of sheep, there were woolen goods everywhere. Ingenious New Zealanders had also created a seemingly unending array of products involving kiwifruit, including cookies, breads, jellies, candies, butters and lotions, among other things.

There was also a smallish Westfield shopping mall, which mostly attracted us by having a large, inexpensive and varied food court. But by the time we finished our shopping along Queen Street, the mall had closed, and we had to seek out dinner somewhere else. Auckland also has other food courts (including one under our hotel), but they all seemed to close fairly early, apparently leaving us to the mercy of the rather expensive sit-down restaurants for our last New Zealand dinner. But persistence paid off, as we stumbled across an underground principally Asian food court which was still open. We tried Thai and Chinese food, and found both to be quite good and reasonably priced.

One interesting vendor was a gastronomic United Nations, serving South American, Italian, Malaysian and Mexican food, as well as British-style fish and chips. This frightened us a little, as we wondered how they could possibly be good at all those things, but we probably would’ve ended up there out of curiosity if we’d had another day in Auckland. But reservations being what they were, we would have to bid New Zealand a fond arrivaderci the following day, and cross the Tasman Sea to

Australia

Connie Eating Satay Chicken	Thai Curry Chicken
Nella and Beef with Broccoli	Brazilian/Italian/Mexican/Malaysian/Fish Stand