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Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

Starting from this day and for the rest of my honeymoon days (except maybe the last two), my body followed a regular routine:

1. Morning – Feeling pretty okay, I must be getting better! Ready to enjoy a new day of New Zealand
2. Later morning – Sore throat/coughing/other cold symptoms begin, start drinking water and using up tissues incessantly
3. Lunch – Brief respite by consuming foods and beverages
4. Afternoon – Body feeling fatigued and getting warm, continue to drink water/sports drinks and using up tissues, nap in hotel room under influence of cold medicine
5. Evening – Find decent place to eat, barely eat anything because of complete loss of appetite and general feeling like shit
6. Night – Fever in full blast, constant coughing and throat pain wakes me up repeatedly throughout the evening, eventually manage enough sleep to start the whole damn cycle again

Not to spoil the rest of my honeymoon posts, but repeat that cycle, like, 7 times more. That pretty much summarizes my honeymoon. Some days (like this day) may be lacking in pictures and good recollection because I felt terrible and we really didn’t do that much as I tried to recover. I felt bad for Kelvin, who was a very good new husband and took great care of me the entire time. I’ve heard that women often get sick on their honeymoon because their immune system is less-than-optimal after the stresses of wedding planning, note to future brides: take care of yourself before the wedding!

During my hotel bookings, different hotels would have different perks offered on different days at different prices. Often times value was maximized with breakfast included, and this morning was one of those days. It was part of the “Lobby Breakfast Express” special, but when we went to the lobby, the breakfast area was full. Because of this, the staff directed us to the hotel’s breakfast restaurant, The Terrace, to fulfill our breakfast needs. We had a little difficulty finding it; it’s kind of hidden away on the 4th or so floor. The Terrace is a breakfast buffet restaurant, and with the freebie breakfast, we could help ourselves to any of the cold foods. There was a nice assortment of cereal, yogurts, pastries, and fruits to help ourselves to.

Display of grains

It was on this New Zealand trip I found out that Kelvin rather likes toast for breakfast. For just about every breakfast, he’d always help himself to toast, with both butter and jam. I only eat toast with butter, no jam. I never heard of eating toast with both butter and jam, so I thought this was different. Maybe I just don’t eat toast enough.

Kelvin enjoying toast with jam and butter

I can’t exactly remember when, but we went to the SkyCity casino either at this time or later in the afternoon (or both). The casino area has security guys checking ID at the entrance, and they seemed to be insistent on people not taking pictures, so I didn’t bother taking my camera out. There’s like 1.5 floors of casino, with most being slot machines with tables in the middle. Very similar to anything you’d find in Nevada, except every dealer was Chinese for some reason. (I wonder if it was run by some New Zealand triad.) Minimums were very cheap at 5NZD (so, like $3), so we wandered around looking for the craps table. Much to our dismay, the casino has no craps tables. I guess it’s not big in New Zealand. Instead, we tried our luck at blackjack. We did okay; we were both down in the end, but we played for a very long time. The casino was promoting some sort of drawing, saying you needed a casino card in order to enter. (The lady announcing it was an American, from California even!) We signed up for our cards, but we needed to play points. Not understanding how it worked, we gave it a shot at the roulette table. I’ve never really watched people play roulette before. Some people are pretty bent on their strategies, splitting their cash all over the board. I spread my money out along with all the other folks and waited for the spin. F*cking 00. I spat out a very unhappy “Wow.”, which was repeated by the Chinese dealer in jest as he cleared off everyone’s money, mocking all us losers. I determined right then that roulette is as lame as it looks, and that it’s worst casino game in existence. I think we lost more here than in blackjack, and we were only there for 5 minutes! When we went to card machine to check our points, we discovered the points must be based on time, cuz we both only had 5 lousy points. Too bad we didn’t have our cards for blackjack.

Kelvin had been saying he wanted to eat lobster ever since the wedding; he really liked the lobster that was served at the reception by Hong Fu. Because of this, we headed towards the harbor for lunch, where my guide books had said several highly rated seafood restaurants were located. There’s a free shuttle that goes around downtown Auckland, and we used this for a convenient ride to the waterfront.

Underneath SkyTower waiting for the shuttle

We walked along the harbo(u)r, looking for good eats. We passed by several restaurants, but not one of them served lobster! At this point, I was beginning to feel ill again. We stopped at a convenience store to buy water and tissues. We also stop by an i-Site (New Zealand visitor centers located EVERYWHERE in the country) to ask about restaurants, but none of the ones suggested had lobster. We ended up settling for crayfish at Harbourside Seafood Bar and Grill, located inside the local landmark, the Ferry Building.

Kelvin looks like a meh teenager in front of the Ferry Building.
I imagine my future children will look like this when they bitch
about me forcing them to be in every picture.

The place is a bit fancy-shmancy, so I made sure to order seafood instead of what I’d usually get (red meat of some sorts) to see what fancy-shmancy seafood tastes like. I’m not a big seafood person (neither is Kelvin), but honestly, I’ve never really tried any seafood in any sort of hardcore manner, except for sashimi. We both ordered soup. I got the seafood chowder, which was really… seafood-y. I tried to finish it, but it was a lot and overwhelmingly… seafood-y. (I really can’t think of a better word.) Plus, my appetite was shot from being sick.

For entrees, we got a 1/2 crayfish and the seafood platter. We only got 1/2 of a crayfish because, well, crayfish is pretty damn expensive. The crayfish combo with seafood platter seemed reasonable, allowing us to try a variety of seafood. According to menu listed on the website, the seafood platter is:

Harbourside Seafood Platter
Sashimi, Sushi, Oysters, Prawn Mayonnaise, Smoked Salmon, Scampi, Grilled Fish, Scallops, Steamed Mussels, Thai Fish Cake, Pipi, Cockle, Garlic Prawns, Chilli Squid

The seafood platter

So, this seafood platter turned out to be a huge mistake. I mean, I have no doubts that we were given high quality seafood worth its New Zealand dollar. It’s just that it turns out, Kelvin and I really aren’t seafood people. I think the only thing I could tolerate were the fish items. Again, every VERY seafood-y and fishy. We both had a really hard time with the shellfish. I could only get through a couple mussels, and there were lots of them, so many were wasted. I don’t even know what was up with that crab cake, cuz it was grosser than any of the half cooked creatures on the platter. Mind you, I actually like crab cake, mainly the East Coast/Baltimore variety. This meal made me feel terrible for two reasons: 1) we were wasting such expensive food and 2) I was getting barfy from trying to eat all of it. Kelvin said his crayfish was okay, but it was closer to a giant shrimp than a lobster.

So much wasted :(

After lunch, we decided to walk back to the hotel instead of taking the shuttle since it wasn’t that far. On the way, we dropped by one of the many shopping centers in downtown. In fact, it was a Westfield shopping center centre! There was a giant ornament in the front of the mall for Christmas spirit, I guess. It’s strange how Australia and New Zealand celebrate Christmas. Everything is still decorated with winter themes, even though it’s summer during their Christmas season. It’s always winter in the North Pole, so it’s not really a stretch. I just never associated summer with Christmas and Santa Claus.

Large ornament in front of Westfield

In the mall, the first place we went to was a pharmacy. I bought cough syrup, throat gargle, and more tissues and water. We bought a poker card box with a kiwi on it from one of the souvenir stands to give to Kelvin’s mom. (Now that I think about it… we still have that box!) We stopped at the food court to grab a soda before heading back to the hotel room. I think we walked back to the hotel, but I’m not sure. We also might have dropped by the casino at this time, but I don’t remember.

We spent the rest of the evening in the hotel, with me sick in bed. I drank a lot of fluids and used a lot of tissues while watching a lot of television. Like I said in the last honeymoon post, I ended up watching a lot of movies on cable channels during this trip, as most of the regular television was from America. (I think we even caught an episode of CSI: Miami one night!) I can’t remember what I watched tonight. I think I saw parts of Walk the Line and determined Johnny Cash was a jerk.

If I wasn’t feeling like turd, I would have had dinner at dine by Peter Gordon, the hotel’s restaurant. Instead, we ordered room service, which I generally like since it makes me feel pampered and extra lazy. The unfortunate thing was that the room service food was terrible. I would say this was definitely my least favorite meal of the trip. I had gotten a simple spaghetti with meat sauce, but the sauce was bitter, lacking flavor, and yucky. Kelvin’s burger and chips were terrible too, but I can’t remember why.

Looks better than it tastes

I think we finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy on Kelvin’s laptop and moved on to finishing the first season of Flight of the Conchords. At some point, I took a shower and found out that my shoulders, which were painfully sunburnt (contributing to my many physical miseries and often made worse by my purse’s strap), had begun peeling and looked disgusting. Luckily, all my shirts were sleeved, sparing New Zealanders of my grossly splotchy shoulders.

Previously, Honeymoon Day 5 – Vinaka Fiji, and kia ora New Zealand!
Next, Honeymoon Day 7 – Hitting the road (on the left side)

New thing I learned today: Lobsters and crayfish are similar crustaceans, with lobsters being marine creatures and crayfish being freshwater creatures and smaller. However, in Australia and New Zealand, the term “crayfish” is used for a saltwater spiny lobster indigenous to the region. Freshwater crayfish are instead called “yabby” (indigenous Australian) or “koura” (New Zealand Maori).

So, Kelvin technically did have lobster! Spiny lobsters have no claws, apparently.

Related posts:

1. Bleh, sick again
2. Our day up in SF, taking engagement photos with FC Wong
3. Weird dreams from being sick
4. Honeymoon Day 7 – Hitting the road (on the left side)
5. Honeymoon Day 5 – Vinaka Fiji, and kia ora New Zealand!