Hot n cold…

After that lavish Japanese lunch that day, we continued with our tour and our first stop was at the Nancy Steen Rose Garden…

They have all kinds of roses there in an array of colours including these purple ones…

After that, we proceeded to the Michael Joseph Savage Memorial Park…

I remember I had been there before during my 2005 visit to Auckland…

…but it was good to be back there again one more time…

…as it was indeed a very nice place…

…and like the others around, you get to relax and enjoy the breathtaking scenery…

Moving on from there, we went to what they call the Auckland Domain where the Auckland Museum is located…

…and also the Winter Garden…

I love the Temperate Garden in one enormous glasshouse for inside, one would find all kinds of colourful flowers…

…and plants…

…some that one would never have seen before…

We spent a long time there admiring everything around us and taking photographs…

…before we went out the back entrance into the courtyard…

Right ahead is the Tropical Garden…

My missus and Melissa and the rest went but they said that inside, there were things that we could easily find in our jungles in Malaysia and it was very hot. HOT??? No, thank you! I certainly had no intention of going over there and experience what we can easily have back home. LOL!!!

Well, like all the rest that we had been to over the past few days during our stay in Auckland, we certainly had a wonderful time going to all these captivatingly beautiful and interesting places and we have my friend and her family to thank for that. Frankly, if we were to join a conducted tour, I wonder how many of all those places would they take us to – not all, I’m pretty sure…and I can bet that we would not even have half the fun!

Geisha…

We had lunch at Parnell, Auckland’s “oldest suburb”…

…that afternoon, our 5th (5½) day there…

…at this Japanese restaurant…

According to this blogger,  this restaurant was named after the city by the same name in Japan which is popular mostly due to the movie and book, “Memoirs of a Geisha” and Akira Kugue, the head chef also known as the Sushi Master, was trained in this area in Japan which is also very much known for the expensive restaurants.

It was indeed a lovely place…

…with the evidently Japanese touch in every nook and cranny…

…including inside the washroom…

The waitresses were all Japanese dressed in kimonos and they were cheerfully smiling all the time, very pleasant indeed  and I must say that the service was very prompt and simply excellent…

We were served this miso soup and salad upon arrival and I must say for someone quite impartial to miso soup, I loved the one here very much – a lot different from what I have had elsewhere and I hear they make it using fresh ingredients unlike many places that use those packet stuff that one can get at the supermarkets.

This was served very early…

– if I’m not mistaken that was the cold dish – the Tataki beef…and to use my exact word at the time, it was simply “orgasmic“. Gosh!!! It was so very nice that it left me absolutely speechless. But in a way, it was a mistake that it came out first for after that, much of everything else paled in comparison. I think I would be quite happy to have just that with a bowl of rice for my lunch!

We had the spider roll…

– soft shell crab, kaiware radish, soba tempura and mayo…and their chawan-mushi – the Japanese-style steamed egg custard…

…and this agedashi tofu…

– deep-fried tofu with spring onion and dashi sauce.

I had the lunch special…

…with the tempura prawns and karaage chicken, if I remember correctly while my missus had the beef teriyaki and the pork katsu…

…and Melissa had the salmon teriyaki and tempura prawns…

My friend’s son had one of the udons, probably kitsune (deep fried tofu)…

…and we all shared the sushi & sashimi set…

…and this one, whatever it is called…

…the kaisen karayaki (grilled with prawn, scallop, oyster, salmon, spring onion, onion, mayonnaise, rice) perhaps for I do remember there being some rice inside…and we also had some teriyaki chicken…

…and some more salmon sashimi…

That certainly was indeed the best Japanese meal I have ever had – not that I’ve been to many as there are only two such restaurants in Sibu…and I walked out of the place still savouring the memory of the taste of that so awesomely yummy tataki beef. Slurpsssss!!!!