Today was a relaxing/driving day. We didn't have any tours booked and good thing because it rained ALL DAY! We started our morning by picking up the free newspaper from the hotel and checking out at 10. They let us leave the car in the parking lot which was nice since Josh didn't want to drive into the downtown area and deal with parking.
We walked 10 minutes to the Dunkin Donuts shop we'd found the night before. We contemplated the variety of options we had. The only doughnuts we've seen in New Zealand have been plain doughnuts with a cinammon sugar coating. They're good but sometimes you want a glazed doughnut. We were in luck today.
We bought half a dozen doughnuts; each one a different flavour. There were only two bar seats to eat at in Dunkin Donuts so we decided to walk down to McDonald's to buy coffess and eat our breakfast while reading the paper. Josh had a mochachino and I ordered a regular coffee making sure to ask if there were free refills. As it turned out, when I went to get my second refill, I found out that you only get ONE free refill and seriously, look at the size of my coffee cup.
We figured we should get a move on since we had 3 hours of driving north in the rain ahead of us. We walked back to the hotel and got our car. We easily found the right road to leave Auckland and we were on our way.
Rain, rain, rain. We couldn't really see much at all as we drove north. The roads weren't too bad in regards to being twisty/turny. That was nice.
When we reached Paihia and found our hotel, Edgewater Palms, there was a truck parked under the covered area so only Josh went inside to check us in. We were staying here for three nights for free with our hotel points. I'd requested an "Admiral's View" room which was supposed to be an ocean view. Also, our room was reserved as a one bedroom apartment.
Once Josh had the key and we drove into the parking garage below, we went into all of the elevators (there are 4 total) before realizing which one would take us to our room: number 20. Having found the right elevator, we went upstairs one flight (too bad we weren't on the very top floor) and we opened the door to our apartment.
It was AWESOME! We were given a two bedroom/two bathroom apartment and told to close the room off that we didn't want to use. Of course, we chose the master bedroom that had an ocean view and walk in closet. The living room also had a massive ocean view through the sliding glass doors. This place rules! Granted, we were on a high traffic road (during the daytime) but the noise could be forgiven for such a great view.
Check out the apartment:
Since it was such a rainy day, we just decided to go grocery shopping and hang out in the apartment for the day. We went to the Woolworth's shop and bought stuff to make burritos for dinner, cereal for breakfast, and some snacks for the following day when we would be on a full day guided tour of the Northland.
Back at the apartment, Josh made us burritos for dinner and we watched tv (Josh gets so excited when our hotels have SKY movies) and used the outdoor hot tub (the rain had finally stopped and the stars were really bright and clear). When we didn't have the jets running on the hot tub, we could hear the waves crashing on the beach across the street.We went to sleep around 11 or so because we had an early morning the next day. We were getting picked up at 7:20 so that meant we'd have to wake up at 6:15 to have breakfast and get ready.
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