Day Three since our arrival in Auckland was a “free” day, meaning free of any specific plans.

We started once again with that wonderful breakfast downstairs in the Trivet restaurant. Coffee is served in small individual coffee presses containing about two cups each, after which you can work up a good buzz by asking for another round. At home, we normally drink decaf coffee in the morning, so getting a caffeine dose is a travel treat.

A bit later in the morning, we went out on our first reconnoissance walk to check out what’s in the area around our hotel. We walked down Albert Street toward the harbor. There are restaurants and shopping areas in the buildings along this short couple of blocks, and then you’re at the edge of the harbor. Directly across the street are the docks where you can catch ferries to several different locations. We turned left, wandered past a couple of large, relatively new hotels, toward the Maritime Museum and Auckland’s Viaduct Harbor.

We just meandered around for a while taking in the sights, then walked out along one of the long piers, this one with apartment buildings (not sure of condominiums or rentals) overlooking the harbor. It appeared to be tough going for the commercial spaces on the ground floors, with lots of empty storefronts. And we couldn’t get any sense of whether the apartments were popular and filled with residents or not. Somewhere at the end was a Hilton Hotel, which must offer some spectacular views.

This is obviously a touristy area. Souvenir shops competing for customers with bars offering discounted drinks and burgers during afternoon happy hours. We walked past a large Chinese restaurant with a great name worth mentioning—White & Wong’s.

Then we strolled back to the hotel, but popped into a corridor through a building lined with shops. I thought I recalled a sandwich place and, sure enough, we quickly ran into Gloria’s. Just as I recalled, it offers a variety of very good looking sandwiches. We ordered, then walked the short distance back to our hotel to eat.

By this time, we had gotten the tsunami alerts from Hawaii and were monitoring the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center for news. Later in the afternoon, the New Zealand emergency management agencies put out is own advisory, warning that there would be dangerous surges and currents even though a tsunami was not expected.

We went out to walk in a different direction, around the corner and up Queen Street, kind of a central shopping area. The first block is filled with those expensive brands, Prada, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, etc. The places we would never go into.

But by the end of the afternoon, Meda (with a little encouragement) was thinking about shopping for a New Zealand wool sweater. She’s been trying to mend the moth eaten sweater she bought at a thrift store years ago, one moth hole at a time. She figured she will eventually find a nice one in a thrift store, but I encouraged her to get a nice one while we’re here. Now she’s come around in her thinking, and I guess that’s a target for us over the next several days.

I made a mistake suggesting we walk through the Queen’s Arcade, lined with small shops. Among them, Gallery Pacific, a small jewelry store featuring the work of local artists and New Zealand materials. High quality stuff, some of which caught Meda’s eye. I have a feeling that after she finds herself a sweater, we may be paying a return visit to Nick at Gallery Pacific.

We’re apparently surrounded by restaurants that get good customer reviews. But we’re cheapskates and tend not to splurge on restaurants, although we’re not so tight-fisted on other things. Last night I walked up the block to a small food court offering an assortment of cuisines, and returned to our room with a paper bag with a meal from Thai Time. Not excellent, but pretty good.

Our first full day in Auckland was dominated by the weather. In a word, it was “nasty.”

The news was reporting winds gusting to 40 mph, with driving rain, heavy at times.

Normally, we would have spent the day wandering around the several blocks around our hotel, getting an idea of the area, seeing the sites, keeping an eye out for possible restaurants we might return to or stores we would like to visit.

But the weather made this impossible. After looking outside and poring over weather forecasts, we decided to just hunker down and relax for most of the day.

Out came the Kindle books, sudoku puzzles, and I spent time writing about the launch of our NZ visit.

The day started with breakfast at Trivet, the restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel that opened for business while we were here last August. We both recalled the incredible breakfast buffet, and it was as good as we remembered. Whether you want fresh fruit, make-your-own waffles, or any manner of hot and cold foods, you’ll be able to find it! With friendly and attentive staff to assist.

This photo is of the cold food section, fruits, several varieties of pastries, salad, cereals, etc. Off to the right, several hot options, from toast or bagels to bacon, sausage, eggs, etc. Also a separate section for juice, milk, and yogurt.

I went with the fruit and pastries breakfast, while Meda leaned into the scrambled eggs, fried tomato, and sausage, washed down with a couple of cups killer coffee.

And I forgot to mention that, for us at least, this is a free breakfast. Here’s the story. We have enough Marriott reward points to qualify for entrance to the Marriott Club lounge maintained in most of the chain’s hotels. But the lounge here in Auckland has not yet emerged from the years’ long renovation of the property. So instead of breakfast in the lounge, we receive the breakfast spread from Trivet at no cost. It’s a great deal for us, for sure!

Later in the morning, it looked like there was a break in the rain, so I raced to put on the new rain jacket purchased for this trip and headed out into the weather. My goal was a Woolworths store just a block down Albert Street. This is not the Woolworths that I grew up with in Hawaii. It’s a medium-size convenience store featuring a deli section, some fresh fruit and veggies, wine and beer, and lots of basic essentials. It’s busy enough to have a large self-checkout section. My goal was simply to pick up a few bottles of NZ wine so that we can avoid paying bar or restaurant drink prices.

Unfortunately, I was only about half-way down the block when the wind and rain kicked up a notch or two. Frankly, it felt like the monsoon had hit and I was silly enough to be caught out in it! I kept a desperate hold on my umbrella, trying to aim in into the wind so that it didn’t convert into a large sail, all the while being pummeled by rain and wind. Luckily, after crossing diagonally across the street when the light chaged, the convenience store was only a few steps away.

But when I emerged after checking myself out with three bottles of wine, it was REALLY raining. The initial monsoon rain had now gotten serious. It was raining. Hard. With winds blowing the hard rain sideways. I huddled against the glass storefront, and remembered that this rain jacket has a hood inside the collar. It took me several minutes of reaching behind my head and feeling around the collar before I discovered how to free the hood, and I thought I was ready to brave the weather!

But a few steps into the wind and rain, and I realized the hood was intent on pushing itself down to cover my face, not fun when walking in an unfamiliar location. I never did solve this problem, but managed to get back to the hotel with constant rearranging of the hood so that I could see the next few steps, then repeating the process.

The good news is that the rain jacket kept me dry. The bad news is that I have no idea how to keep that hood from covering my face. But the heavy rain is not expected to repeat today, so hopefully it won’t have occasion to become an issue again.

After that, we read, relaxed, and ate for the rest of the day. Lunch was back at Trivet for a pile of fries and plate of roasted Brussel sprouts. Then at 4:30, we went down to the lobby bar for the daily happy hour featuring wine and pupu (I haven’t heard what they’re called here in Auckland). And, after a couple of hours, we ordered a small pizza from room service, which was just enough to put us both to sleep.

Well, the wine can claim some credit, too. And so it went on Day 2 in Auckland.

And Day 3 (Wednesday in Auckland, Tuesday back in Hawaii) started with blue sky, scattered clouds, and no rain.

Here’s the view from our room after breakfast.

We met our driver immediately outside the exit after clearing New Zealand customs and biosecurity screening, and he led us on a long walk out of the terminal and over to a small parking area reserved for commercial taxi and ride share services. He commented that traffic was light for a weekday afternoon/evening, and we were at our hotel within 20 minutes or so.

The JW Marriott formerly operated under a different name, and was taken over a few years ago and rebranded as a Marriott. That started a round of extensive renovations, which are now winding down but not complete. It is considered a 5-star hotel, although not priced that way, at least not in U.S. dollars.

Having racked up lots of Marriott nights over the past couple of years, we were upgraded to a top-floor room with a city view, complete with a small section of the harbor visible over the tops of downtown buildings.

First adventure. Where are the light switches? I looked in vain for the normal switches, but then noticed a dark panel with four rocker switches on the wall just outside the bathroom, with the A/C controller just above it. You can see the switch panel in this photo.

The problem is that the lettering, perhaps once-upon-a-time done in white, is now dingy and almost illegible in anything but bright light. But how to get bright light if you can’t see the labels on the switches? Cue the deep breath.

I was finally able to see the labels by using the iPhone’s flashlight for bright illumination. One switch had nothing at all to do with lights, but was to set a “do not disturb” signal outside the door. After a round of trial-and-error testing, we were able to figure out what lights each of the others controlled. But real world issues arose. When you get up in the middle of the night in the dark to use the bathroom, how are you going to remember which switch turns on a minimal bathroom light?

We decided to defer worrying and just go with it for now.

Otherwise the room is quite nice. It’s a good size. Lots of plugs for to keep our electronics happy (iPhones, iPads, Apple watches, camera batteries, etc). That makes us happy, unlike some other hotels we’ve been in. And the Marriott wifi is easy to access, and plenty fast for everyday stuff. The higher speed wifi, available to Marriott regulars, is able to handle movies, etc. So no complaints on the wifi front.

There’s an in-room safe, which makes everything simpler. Lots of hangers in the closet. A small table and chair, and a small couch with pillows for lounging. A king bed. The room is quiet. The television huge.

But there’s one major aggravation with the television. The tv remote easily finds a list of available channels. But what is on those many channels at any particular time? We haven’t discovered any source of that info. We turned on the television somewhere around 6 p.m. local time hoping to find some Auckland news. But apparently we would have to go through the channels one by one, checking each manually in search of news. That just doesn’t work.

Note for JW Marriott: You really need to provide the equivalent of “Guide” which lists programming on each channel so that a viewer can easily choose. Without that, the channel list is largely useless.

Since Air New Zealand fed us a light meal about 3 p.m., we decided against looking for a full meal, and decided to split a burger from the hotel’s 24-hour room service. Ordering is online. I selected the burger, responded to a question of how many guests (two of us), and ordered. It arrived pretty promptly, and tasted as good as it looked.

But (isn’t there always a “But…”)…Of course, it was delivered with a single napkin and one set of flatware. Not a big deal, but aggravating since the ordering system solicited the information on number of guests.

And then we learned another lesson. I had carefully packed a bottle in my suitcase to provide us drinks for the first few days of our visit, and they would be much better with a bit of ice. Meda sent me out to in search of an ice machine. I wandered the halls one our floor, which is much bigger than I thought. No sign of ice. So we called down to the front desk to inquire about ice. They seemed surprised by the question and had no ready ahswer, which was a surprise to us, since virtually every U.S. hotel we’ve been in has ice readily available. Finally the front desk contacted the “catering” office, and a ice bucket (about six inches high)was delivered to our room. That got us through the night.

Today we’ll be looking for a better solution, perhaps begging some ice from the lobby bar.

End of Day 1, flight and arrival.