Forget All Your Cares and Go DOWNTOWN ...

It is late Wednesday morning, and we are having trouble getting anything done around here because of the steady rain tapping on our roof is lulling us into wanting to curl up in bed with our books. However, since it's Wednesday we have the auction calling out to us and are trying to ignore the coziness of such a perfectly rainy day. This really has nothing to do with what I wanted to write about it is just a mean poke to all of you in the hot, dry Texas heat. ;)

What I want to tell you about is the fabulous day we had yesterday. We walked into the village and had our morning coffee at the cafe before catching the bus to New Lynn. In New Lynn we switched and caught the train to downtown, which was free thanks to an older gentleman who was taking tickets not wanting to mess with breaking a $20 dollar bill. We strolled downtown making our way to the movie theater to watch Pirates 2 for my birthday. We discovered that this theater has what they called "Gold Class Seating" so went to check it out. Gold class seating is shown in a theater that has 30 reclining, over-stuffed Lazy boy chairs and where you can place orders for food and beverage and have it served to you. After discovering that the Gold class ticket office was its own concierge desk with full bar attached, we decided that we could probably not afford it. Indeed, tickets cost $35.00 each, but that did include popcorn and drink. Since we have plans to see several movies this week at the Auckland Film Festival we decided to skip the fancy seating for another day. Since we had to wait to see the movie with the common folk we had time to kill. The mall where the theater was located was a strange mixture of futuristic space station and fun house. It had multiple floors that were attached with crazy crooked bridges, escalators, and spiral staircase enclosed in pink neon lights. We found the food court after walking through a slanted staircase. We dined on some delicious sushi and made our way to a gigantic Borders book store. It was made up of at least 5 levels and included a coffee bar and balcony. We only had time to explore about half of it before having to go to the movie. Pirates 2 is considered a blockbuster and so you have to pay the full price of 15.00 a ticket AND has allocated seating. Not understanding the allocated seating we showed up very early to get a good seat only to be shown to the seats on our ticket. I did at least appreciate that they had 4 staff members working to help people find their allocated seats, and the huge theater was sold out. The movie was excellent and I highly recommend it. I also recommend that you watch the previous Pirates first because they do make a few jokes based on the first that are hilarious if you remember that particular scene. You do not need to see the first one to understand the plot, just to better enjoy a few jokes. After the movie we perused another mall and strolled back to the train station. While waiting for the bus in New Lynn we dined at our favorite Indian spot "Ali Baba's Kababs". The counter is between two sconces with dancing fake cloth fires (we pretend they are real and do not acknowledge the fan and lighting effects that are required to make the cloth "flames" dance and look like real flames). With our bellies full we caught the bus back to the village. Our walk home was brilliantly lit with a full moon that you almost need to wear sunglasses to protect your eyes.