Restaurants in Auckland

I have been humbled in the past few weeks about something that I could never have expected. Being from Portland for some reason I thought that it was the epicenter of good quality restaurants. I might have been wrong.

Roberta and I have eaten out probably 18 times since we showed up here. Not one of those meals I would consider even slightly below standards. Everything from the fancy restaurants in foofy neighborhoods to the little cafe next to my office have had wonderful food. No matter how much you pay for a meal it has always been good. For example, spending about $5 NZ (~2.75 US) for lunch at the cafe is filling and very tasty. Vegetarian meals are a side though but still well done.

French toast here is not like it is in the states. It comes as a stack of regular french toast alternated with bananas cut lengthwise in half and baked in their skin and thick slabs of bacon. So you get this towering breakfast of champions.

Mmmm... I just got hungry writing this post.

On a non-food related note. I was worried about how bad the drivers were going to be based on what everyone on the message boards was saying. I told people that I survived a year of driving in Costa Rica and they said that was nothing. Well I must say that they are wrong. I have found the drivers here to be very courteous and kind. They always slow down to let you merge onto the motorway and we haven't seen road rage since we actually learned how to drive on the right(left) side of the road. It seems to be about the same as Portland for drivers. The traffic here is a whole other thing though. Imagine Portland without mass transportation and that is Auckland. There are way too many cars here.

More pictures to come soon.