Mt. Eden

Went to the Globe bar last night with Simon (guy in room), stayed there for a couple of hours or so, then back to room. Problem with sleeping too much is you eventually get so much sleep, you can't sleep the next night. That happened to me last night, I was awake all night. Oh well.

Finally fell asleep about 6:30 or 7:00, and woke up about 11:00, showered, had breakfast, picked up my plane ticket, went shopping for another backpack (I don't wanna bring all my stuff to the islands), then took the train to Mt. Eden.

The subway/train system here is hilarious! It's just chaos, trains never arrive or leave on time, the railway staff make announcements apologizing for the late train, and remarking that they don't know when it'll arrive or what track it'll arrive on, but when they find out, they'll make another announcement! The tracks they are using to run their train system are old freight tracks, so when you get off at a stop, it's nothing more than a concrete dock, with a rickety old pedestrian bridge to the roadway! Our train had to backup onto a side track because another train was coming down the line (probably the late one!), and the conductor announces over the train intercom that it'll just be a few minutes, then, with a cheery voice, says, "Hope everyone's having a WONDERFUL day!". Everyone on the train chuckled. Ahhh, just growing pains, really! And it only cost $1.10, so it's cheaper than the bus! I'm sure in a few years, it'll be one efficient subway.

Mount Eden isn't high, maybe 200 metres aboce sea level, but is the highest "mountain" in Auckland, and gives some dramatic views all around. The volcano crater was massive! It was a rally cool sight, I never imagined it to be that big.

Spent maybe an hour there, then walked back to the downtown (just had to follow the Skytower), then started packing up my new backpack with everything I wanted to take. I'm gonna leave my big backpack, with most of my stuff in it, at the hostel, they only charge $6/week for storage.

I also did some laundry, and cut my finger. So, I'm a little slow at typing at the moment, and making lots of mistakes.

I went to BK for supper. BTW, Burger King sucks in Australia. They don't have double cheeseburgers. But, they do have them at BK in NZ! Yay!!

That's all folks.