Just desserts…

After our tour of the scenic spots in Auckland, my friend and her family took us to this cafe in Devonport for coffee…

I guess you all can easily guess which one was mine…

Melissa saw the seafood chowder on the menu…

…and could not resist ordering that despite the fact that we had had a really heavy brunch. I tried a bit but I thought it wasn’t all that great. My friend said that they would be taking us some place else sometime where the seafood chowder would be simply out of this world…but you’ll have to wait awhile till we come to that.

We ordered some of the desserts to share like this one, for instance…

…which was jolly good and so was the chocolate lava cake that we had…

As you can see, it was very nicely done…

…and it tasted great.

The apple crumble that I requested for…

…turned out somewhat disappointing as it was a little bit too sour for my liking and fat people, as you all know, do not quite fancy sour stuff.

The one that stood out among all our orders and stole the show was this crème brûlée…

…which swept me off my feet. I had this once in Penang but it certainly did not get me jumping for joy and since then, I never wanted to order that anywhere else.

While we were there, we spent sometime touring this suburb town and dropping by the shops – details and photos on that coming up in the next post.

In the meantime, we headed on back to the house where my friend insisted that we tried the Greek sweets and desserts that she had bought at the Parnell Farmers’ Market earlier that morning. These baklava are supposed to be the favourite…

…but it was a bit too sweet for me. I liked the rolled version, the saragli, a little bit more as they were not as sweet but I loved these the most…

The filling was made of crushed pistachio and was more savoury than the other two and I enjoyed it a lot.

Well, the feasting certainly did not end there for the day…for after a bit of rest, we were on the road again – on our way to dinner! No wonder by the end of our stay in Auckland, I was literally bursting at the seams, eh? Wink! Wink! LOL!!!

Up the hills…

After that ultra-heavy yum cha brunch, we certainly needed a bit of exercise so we went sightseeing at places up and down the hills around Auckland City.

First stop, One Tree Hill…

When I first came here in 1980, there was indeed one tree at the top of the hill but if I’m not mistaken, eventually, some political activist went and chopped it down so the tree wasn’t there anymore.

This was the view of Rangitoto from the hill…

…and here is Melissa with the city skyline in the background…

You can see from the smiles on her face in all her photographs that she was very happy all throughout our stay in Auckland with our awesomely wonderful hosts.

Hmmmm…somebody obviously had a bit too much time on his hands, it seemed…

Next, we proceeded to Mt Eden…

…where one would be able to see the volcanic crater…

…and walk around the rim. I did not, of course – the word does not exist in my vocabulary…so I just spent my time snapping more scenic photographs while waiting for the rest of them to come back. You can see the Sky Tower and the Harbour Bridge in this one…

…and this is the shot of One Tree Hill from Mt Eden…

Our last stop that afternoon was at North Head…

…and again, one would be able to get a nice view of the city from the look-out point at the top of the hill…

Actually, I had been to the first two of the three places before but things certainly seemed so much nicer when one was in the company of great friends, don’t you think? We certainly enjoyed the tour and at the end of it all, my friend said that it was time for tea…but that would be in the next post. Make sure you come back for that, ok?