On Tuesday morning, after a leisurely start, we walked back over to Queen Street and revisited the small jewelry store in the Queen’s Arcade, Gallery Pacific.

Nick remembered us from the day before and pulled out the items Meda had been looking at.

She chose a colorful pendant made of shell and set in sterling silver, with colors that shift with the quality of the light it reflects. She’s a happy camper.

But it’s not the only item of jewelry she’ll be going home with, as our run through several thrift stores, known here as op shops, also produced results. Along the way she found a small jade pendant, a colorful shell pendant, and a silver stick pin with a tiny colorful Kiwi. These were all picked up at thrift store prices!

You can click on any photo for a closer look.

And there’s one more pendant I couldn’t get a photo of because it’s all wrapped up for travel. It’s a simple black slate pendant on a black string, purchased at the Auckland Art Gallery. What makes it unusual is that it is made from a slate tile removed during the museum’s reroofing, so turning scrap into art! What fun!

The rest of the day was again spent on a continuing wander through the streets of Auckland, ending back at our hotel for a nap and several glasses of wine in the hotel lobby lounge during happy hour, another perk that goes with our Marriott elite status. I’ll explain that in a later post. And we want to give a shout out to Mon, our favorite server during the afternoons we’ve spent in the lounge. She’s been helpful, attentive, and quite charming. Thank you, Mon.

We fly back to Honolulu on Air New Zealand Flight 10 late this evening, Wednesday, and arrive in Honolulu early Wednesday morning thanks to the International Dateline.

Although we’ve had a very good time vacationing here in Auckland, we’ll be very happy to see the cats again and enjoy some feline-disrupted sleep.