Out of the frying pan into the fire
Trip Start
Jul 12, 2006
1
116
230
Trip End
Jun 18, 2007
Auckland,
North Island,
New Zealand
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
As we waited for another taxi to take us to our new hostel, for the third day in a row, I complained very loudly about the bed bugs to anyone that cared (not that anyone did) and when the taxi arrived I think I picked up almost everything we owned and jumped into it so quick
Harbour sculpture
. At least the new place can't be as bad as Base I said chuckling to Lee, yeah he said, and oh how wrong could I have been. I was really tired when we checked in but the room was ready so we thought that we could grab a couple of hours much needed sleep before heading out. I didn't really think when I handed over the cash for all three nights to the bloke behind reception. We never ever do this, only ever paying for one night to see how the hostel is then deciding if we want to say, but constant itching and lack of sleep had sent my brain to mush and I'd handed over the money before really thinking about it. We headed on up to our room only to be greeted by loud music coming from our neighbours. Loud bang bang, tragic, music. Not only that the walls were so thin you could hear everything, including the rather large sounding Pacific gang leader in the rom ext to us on the phone to his 'homey bro's telling them not to f***king start that S**t with him. Oh lovely... he seemed to have a young lady in the trying to placate his anger but it didn't seem to work, he turned the music down low enough to shout down the phone but turned it right back up again afterwards. We were desperate hoping that it was the builders but it didn't appear to be so. Even with earplugs in there was no escaping the noise so we headed back downstairs and asked to move rooms. The bloke behind the counter couldn't have been less helpful, saying he couldn't move us because then it would just become a problem for whoever he moved into our room
Lee with a Leffe and mussles in Occidental
. He said he'd go and knock on their door to complain for us but to be honest, we didn't really feel comfortable with that. They didn't sound like the people you'd complain about, even Lee agreed and he's normally a bit braved than I am. After a little argument with the guy he agreed to change our rooms. So back upstairs we went, moved all our stuff, back downstairs to swap keys, back upstairs to our room, which we were pleased with. It wasn't as nice as the other one, a bit smaller, but it was away from the noise enough that we couldn't hear it with ear plugs in. So into bed we jumped again, trying desperately to get some sleep, when the person next door to this room starts up his games console and starts playing a game really loudly. It was an utter nightmare. I thought Base was bad, which it was, but this was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, just without the bedbugs. We went back downstairs again and asked to leave, but the guy wouldn't have it, he said we'd gone past our time to complain, so we invited him upstairs to listen to the noise. He came upstairs with us then while we made a quick dash into the lift, he knocked on the doors to tell the occupants to turn the noise down. We waited for him in the lobby and when he returned I explained that we'd pay for tonight but would leave tomorrow and wanted our money back. No refund he said, sorry, but you've paid and that's it. And that's when the tiredness, the bed bug bites and the fact I'd came on today (sorry boys) kicked in and I burst into tears, right on queue I think, I couldn't help it I was so pissed off and so tired and fed up that I told the bloke our last week had been ruined, his hostel was the worst I've stayed in (which it is) and that I wasn't going to let our last two days be ruined by staying in this hell hole and that we wanted our money back tomorrow when we checked out
Reflections
. To which he agreed, he apologised, said that he'd be on in the morning and that we could have a full refund when we checked out. As we left Lee patted me on the shoulders, dried my tears and said Well Done. It was quite funny, I think he thought I was putting on the tears, which I wasn't, but it did the trick.To try and save what was left of the day we headed off down Queen street again to find some nice food to treat ourselves for the last couple of days of misery. Lee had complained about the hostel we stayed at in Parnell because it was noisy, he even said he was glad to be leaving but in hindsight he said it was a lovely hostel and that we should go back there. It worked out about the same, even including taxi fare home on a late night, but it was much much nicer, So we phoned up and booked ourselves back in. Still hoping that we might salvage something from our last couple of days in Auckland. Just around the corner from where we walked we stumbled upon The Occidental, I'd read about it in one of the hostels we'd stayed in. It was a Belgian restaurant ala Belgos' really. So stopped to have a steaming bowl of green lipped NZ mussels, a few glasses of lush Belgian beer, Belgian waffles (Dad, they weren't a patch on the real ones from Brussels) and some coffee with handmade Belgian chocolates. It was one of the best meals we'd had, the mussels were delicious, big juicy plump mussels with so much flavour
Skytower from the road
. The bill was a bargain, you'd never get what we had in Belgos for so little money. We sat outside while we ate, watching the world go by. One thing that does amuse me about NZ and Auckland in particular, is that Kiwi's really do love to be fashionable. The girls especially. I watched with envy at all the lovely shoes people owned, I miss my shoe collection, mind you saying that I have happened to aquire 7 pairs in my rucksack, which is slightly excessive when travelling but I do need them all - honest! Some of the outfits did require the attention of the fashion police IMO but then I was sitting in the same clothes I've worn for the last 4 and a half months so I guess I'm not one to comment, but it was fun in my head. Even the older people try and dress trendy, it's really funny seeing someone your Mum's age in the latest fashions straight from the gossip magazine pages, it's just wrong somehow. But it's good fun to see. I think they've been watching to much reality tv over here. But good on 'em, because most Kiwi's I've seen look stunning and really do look like they've stepped from the pages of a magazine. Most of 'em just seem to have style and look good with ease. It does make me feel a tad uncomfortable in my rags sometimes. Once we'd stuffed ourselves and were content and happy with our feed we headed for a little walk about, no where in particular, just up roads we hadn't been up, down side streets we hadn't explored. It was nice really, just having a wander, then we stumbled upon a lovely pub called the Shakespeare at the top of a road with a great view of the ferry. It was a brew pub and one of Auckland's oldest. Lee instantly fell in love with it and their brews. It did have a nice feel to it, nice décor and a nice atmosphere. The staff were really helpful and it even came complete with a drunk man that brushed the dust from your shoes for you. We stayed for a while, playing a few games of pool and contemplating our disastrous last few days before heading off for another wander. This time to a pub called the Taven, which promised to be the best there was, which is wasn't because it was cold, dead and lifeless in there. We had just the one drink in here then got that heavy feeling of dread that we'd have to return to the hell hole we'd booked into this morning. Neither of us wanted too but we needed some food and had decide to us up what was left in our box that we'd been lugging around.
Back at the hostel we grabbed the food, headed to the kitchen and we just astounded to find that not only did the kitchen not have any plates or cutlery, it also only had 1 pan available. We were actually contemplating making our tuna pasta in there but we saw rotting food around the place, dirty stuff all around the sink and just no where to eat at all. So we headed back out to Queen Street and went to, possibly, the worlds worst Nando's. We ate up as much as we could before heading back to the horrid hostel to go straight to bed, excluding the middle bit with the nice food and pub, I wanted today to be over as quick as possible.
