a Summer weekend in Auckland is hard to beat – its temps in the mid-70s Fahrenheit (~24 degrees Celsius) make for the perfect opportunity for beach days, street festivals, and outdoor bar hopping…which is exactly what this past weekend entailed!
Saturday
workout
Kicked off the weekend with pilates at my new fav studio, reformer pilates. luuuv this place.
brunch
After Clay got home from work on Saturday around noon, we headed to Up Cafe in the CBD for brunch and coffee. This no-frills cafe was great and we liked everything we ordered! I had an iced Americano and omelette, and Clay had a flat white and eggs on toast.
Lunar New Year Festival
Our next stop was the Lunar New Year Festival on Lorne Street. They had all kinds of entertainment here – performers, street food vendors, a mini parade, karaoke, etc. we bought a ice cream in an egg waffle cone (amazing) and watched the parade for a bit. We also grabbed drinks from Cocomo while we were here, which is a Chinese cafe serving coconut drinks and desserts. Their cloud drinks look interesting to say the least… the base is coconut water and it’s topped with a flavored foam. I’ve only tried the pistachio, but it’s pretty good and worth a try if you’re a fan of coconut.
bar hopping
After the festival, we walked over to the Viaduct and checked out the bar at Bivacco. The restaurant itself is super cute and right on the viaduct with views of the harbor. we sat at the bar and discovered they have an amazing loyalty program that allows you to get drinks and food at the bar for insanely low prices (like spritzes for 15NZD/8USD and wagyu cheeseburgers with fries for the same price). so naturally we had a few drinks here (the watermelon spritz was literally a watermelon jolly rancher in a drink) and fries because why not. we will 100% be back here!
post-Bivacco, we headed to one of our favorite bars in Auckland, Queens rooftop. This place has the best spicy watermelon marg and beautiful views of the water. Def recommend booking ahead if you’re looking to be at a table, otherwise they allow you to stand by the bar. it’s the perfect Saturday afternoon/evening bar!
Dinner
At this point, it was ~7pm, so we looked around for dinner options and decided on GOAT, an indian restaurant on Wyndham Street with outstanding reviews. we decided to do their chef’s tasting menu, which was 84NZD or 47USD per person, and consisted of four courses. Everything we had was incredible, but Our favorites of the night were the Lucknowi Kebab (first photo) and Afghani Tawa chicken (fourth photo). highly recommend!!
Sunday
I basically spent the entire day at the beach while Clay was back at work… which may have been a mistake. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so sunburnt and I swear I wore sunscreen and reapplied. The NZ sun is no joke ok!!!!
There are a few beaches relatively close to Auckland CBD, but I chose to go to St. Helier’s beach after reading it’s less touristy and less crowded than it’s neighboring beach, Mission Bay (both of which are on Tamaki Drive). There was plenty of open space and the beach was beautiful.
For lunch, I ended up going to La Vista Café. Their outdoor seating overlooks the beach and the food was great.
After lunch, I headed up to the Achilles Point area because I knew from coming up here before that there was a beach just below it that looked amazing (ladies bay beach). They warn you that it’s a nude beach on the sign walking down to it, but I was not prepared for the amount of nudity lol. It was pretty wild but the beach and surrounding views were stunning!! You just might see something you weren’t looking to see as you’re enjoying the views…
At some point I realized I was incredibly sunburnt, so I took the bus back home (the easiest way to get out to Mission Bay/St. Heliers in my opinion!!). I finished off the weekend by lathering myself in aloe and eating Indian takeout (big Indian food weekend) on the couch. Minus the sunburn it was the perfect weekend in Auckland 🙂
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