After getting to our hotel, with sweeping views of Sky Tower and most of Auckland, we ignored the jetlag and walked for miles. Apparently people don’t believe in breakfast after 9am here, so it took us a while to find an open spot, but Gloria Jean’s did not disappoint. We then tried to find this “water” that Auckland is apparently built around, but couldn’t seem to locate it until several hours later. It was just around the corner the whole time. Around the other corner, Brevin’s nostalgia was fulfilled when we found a Nando’s, where we shared two 1/4 chickens and a grilled halloumi. Apparently that night, South Africa won the Rugby World Cup, which Aucklanders felt the need to vigorously celebrate loudly into the wee hours of the morning. Despite our 30th floor hotel room, closed windows, and heavy curtains, the celebration could be heard from afar.
Just as soon as Ilana had fallen asleep for the night, Ilana luck popped up. The fire alarm in hotel went off 30 minutes after we passed out from the long travel day. The building-wide alarm and announcement system did not indicate that we had to leave our rooms, but rather stand by for further instructions. So we waited. And waited. And wanted to go back to sleep, but rather just waited at the constant blaring. With no answer from the front desk and no reprieve in sight (sound) Brevin made his way down to the lobby to see in person what was going on. No luck down there for a while, but eventually the alarms magically turned off. Now at this point Brevin couldn’t get back up the elevator since he didn’t have the room key, so Ilana in her pajamas and sleepy grumpiness went down to meet him at floor 24 as instructed. But her key didn’t work so she got off at 29 and figured she’d pop down the stairs and rescue him and go up from there. But nope. The stairs are all locked, which she didn’t know until she was already in the locked stairwell, so she had to walk all the way down the 29 flights of stairs, barefoot in PJs, to meet Brevin in the lobby. What they don’t tell you is that the stairwell exit doesn’t actually lead into the lobby or anywhere inside the hotel, but rather outside in a weird back alley of the hotel that were unrecognizeable to a confused, jet-lagged, and increasingly angry Ilana. Eventually she made her way inside (whilst mid-phone call shouting at Brevin), and the pair successfully made their way back to their room after the ~20 minute ordeal. All in all, a busy first night on our honeymoon.