I recently met up with Clint and his friend Nina in Grand Central in Ponsonby for an after-work beer. Ginger fusion, actually, something they had on the table and I joined in, not tasting the alcohol in it until it was too late….

Clint is a Pacific Islander through and through, coming from the biggest of it: Papua New Guinea, or short: PNG. He speaks a number of languages and works as a digital content publisher for BNZ.

Nina surprised me with her amazing command of German, with an Austrian twang, stemming from her time near Graz. Anyone who knows how to pronounce my hometown correctly in the local dialect wins my heart.

We hit Ponsonby Central, a farmer’s market with fresh local produce, a range of bars, a radio station and restaurants, from Argentinian Aseo, Japanese to, in our case, delicious Mexican food at Maldito Medez.

On Saturday morning, Clint took me to another great place I would never have found on my own: Little and Friday, a small breakfast place in Newmarket, a nice, old-turned-modern shopping district of Auckland.

Oddly enough, it was housed in a huge tissue shop, with just a few communal tables. The choice of yummy sandwiches, frittatas, quiches and rolls is amazing, as are the sweet cupcakes. You’ll definitely overeat there….

From there, we needed a digestive walk over to the Auckland domain, a huge park in the east of Auckland, sitting on top of an extinct volcano cone, that houses the War Memorial Museum, a sports field, and has an amazing view over the harbor and downtown.

It’s also the home of the Wintergarden, some cute little tropical houses with a number of tropical plants, and a collection of fern trees. The silver fern is New Zealands tree, and symbol of its sporting teams.

I will come back to see the museum this week. We found a nice spot under a tree and unpacked our provisions from Little and Friday…