Food + Wine + Festival = darn good fun :-)

I slept in late, had a leisurely breakfast, and checked my email during the morning. Seema greeted me and told me that she loved the way I had made my bed! Haha, she is such a sweetheart... Sarah came into the room at one point and started talking again about her and her brother going to the Food and Wine Festival over on Devonport Island for the day. After I found out they were coming back for the night and that it was only $11 for the bus and ferry ride there and back, I was all in! So, they were great and waited for me to shower and get ready. When I got back up to the lounge, I found out that Ben and Suguru were coming along too! Excellent :-) It took a little while for everyone to be ready and in one place, but eventually, we were out the hostel door and on our way.

We arrived in the center of Auckland city and found the ferry. The ride over was short and it was looking to be a beautiful, sunny, blue skied day! Perfect :-) We kept noticing loads of people dressed in 70's style hippy outfits too...haha, not really sure why, but we assumed it was part of the festivals festivities!

When we arrived at the Food and Wine Festival gate, we discovered it would be $30 to get in... eh???? A bit more than we were hoping to spend, but we thought we'd get a free glass of wine out of it – turns out, only those who purchased tickets ahead of time got the free wine... Krikee!! Lame beans... But, we soon got over the fact the the festival was more $ than we had originally thought (we had to buy our drinks once we got in the festival too...) and decided to have a grand ol' time. Funny thing was, I ended up not even having a single glass of wine...just beer! But I tried their Summer Ale and 2 x Golden Lager, all of which I throughly enjoyed :-)

There were pirates on stilts, a comedian, several live bands, and loads of people. It was all held in a fairly small space, but it didn't feel too crowded. Plus, it was right by the water so that was really nice.

We ended up staying till almost the end and danced and sang along to a live cover band – they totally had my attention when they started playing “wagon wheel.” Such a great tune!!

We decided to walk up the mountain on the island in order to see an incredible view of the city. Instead of walking the roundabout way, I surged straight up the hill, shortest (and steepest) way possible to get to the top! I thought Sarah was going to keel over and die...haha. But the view from the top was amazing. Beautiful mountains and water and the city-scape was awesome too.

We took the ferry and the bus back to Freemans where I met one of my new dorm mates. I asked him if he wanted to run to the supermarket with me and get some food and he said he was in. Found out his name was John and he was from Montana! He was here for a month and wanted to see and do as much of NZ as he possibly could – but he's also super into trout fishing, so that was a key part of his travel too.

Got back to the hostel, ate a late dinner, and then hit the pillow. It was a long but really fun day!

PS. No word on any of the jobs I applied for...dang it! This might prove to be more difficult than I thought...