Travel: Our First Soggy Days in New Zealand

Why hello there! We are back from our trip to New Zealand and so glad to be back home! We arrived home on Saturday night after a day full of delays and cancellations (we were originally supposed to be back home at 9am - not 9pm like we were!) - but that's a story for another day. 

After catching up on some sleep yesterday, I thought I'd sit down this afternoon to share the first pieces of our New Zealand adventure with you all! We managed to get through the trip without a single glutening (Coeliac Travel SUCCESS!) and without any major mishaps, however, we did get up to LOTS of fun things so we have heaps to share.

But whilst I'll fill you in on it as we go along, we wanted to start right at the beginning! We started our New Zealand trip the same way we finished it, in Auckland! Here's we got up to on those first (very soggy!) days!

We arrived in Auckland at around 4pm on New Year's Eve and the first thing we did was pick up our Rental Car. We'd rented a super cute Corolla that would be taking us all over the north island throughout the trip and it was the perfect choice. 

The first thing we did was plug in the GPS (and my phone for music, thanks to our Spotify Playlist!) and headed straight for the closest grocery store. As every allergy traveler knows, food is a must and we stocked up with food for the first couple of days so we could get to our accommodation and cook dinner! 

We were staying in Birkenhead first up, a cute little town about 40 minutes from the airport. It was far enough away from the city that it was nice and quiet - but close enough that we had plenty of things to do. 

For the first part of the trip we used Air BnB to book our accommodation. We were staying at a cozy little one bedroom apartment (here it is if you're interested) owned by Chrissy and her partner Mike. 

The apartment was beautifully furnished and had everything we needed - a cozy bed, a gorgeous bathroom, kitchenette, loungeroom and even a private balcony to enjoy dinner on. 

Soon after arriving, I cooked up dinner which we enjoyed on the balcony. We arrived with the sky covered in a thick layer of yucky grey clouds and we knew the weather would be caving in pretty soon.In fact, we had only just finished eating our dinner when raindrops started to fall. Pretty soon the wind was howling and the raindrops were pounding down - so we spent our new year's eve snuggled up on the couch with bowls of popcorn watching movies.

Gnomeo and Juliet was on TV, followed  by New Year's Eve - and then we headed to bed pretty early as we were exhausted from a day of traveling (as our flight there was also delayed!)

The next morning we awoke to yet more rain - and it didn't show signs of stopping. 

After cooking up breakfast, we made a mad dash to the car to head to a local shopping centre (one of the few places open on New Year's Day!) to have a look around. 

We drove over the "picturesque" Auckland Harbour, however, we could have really been anywhere as we couldn't see through the rain! 

We caught a glimpse of the yachts docked at the harbour, however, that was about all we could see!

After looking around at the stores, we headed back to the apartment to relax for the afternoon. The insane weather meant that we couldn't watch anything on TV (as the satellites were cutting in and out) so we decided to play a good ol' fashioned game of Scrabble!

I kicked Jesse's butt the first round, however, he then discovered the "two letter word dictionary" at the back of the Scrabble instructions booklet and used those two letter words to kick my butt in the second round. 

In case you're wondering, "Qi" with the Q on a triple letter tile is pretty much the easiest way to win - especially if you can put it somewhere than you can make Qi twice by placing an I below and on the right of the Q. 

I've had a couple of readers email me asking me what we cook for dinner whilst away from home (and without access to all of our usual cooking utensils/ingredients etc) and the answer to that is pretty simple food! 

The first night we had steak with steamed veggies, corn and sweet potatoes (I cooked all of the veggies in the microwave in freezer bags) and the second night we had grilled chicken with feta, wild and brown rice (microwave rice packets are a life saver when traveling!) as well as steamed corn and salad. 

Simply, nutritious and delicious!

The next day we woke up and guess what?! It was STILL raining. We were beginning to think our whole trip would be verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyy soggy - but we decided to go ahead with all of our plans anyway. 

A little rain wasn't going to kill us, right?! So we hit the road and headed to Lake Taupo - about a three and a half hour drive from Birkenhead. Lake Taupo would be the first fun part of our trip as we had lots of fun things planned - but you'll have to wait to find out what those things were! ;) 

But tell me, what's your favourite thing to do on a rainy day? 

And when you travel do you usually eat out or self cater?

The Details: Accommodation: Leafy Tranquil Escape, AirBNB | Car Rental: Go Rentals Compact Auto Toyota Corolla | Kristy and Jesse explored NZ as guests of Tourism New Zealand.