Eden Park and an Island

Eden Park Stadium is amazing. To this Los Angeleno, it’s astonishing to sit in a 43,200 capacity sports arena that has no parking.

Your ticket includes public transit… so everyone is expected to ride the bus or the train to get there – the surrounding streets are closed to all but residents – so you gotta do a bit of walking too. They accommodate for the disabled, of course, but the actual parking lot is no bigger than that of your average grocery store.

Speaking as someone who frequents Dodger Stadium at least once a year, that’s unbelievable.

The other thing about the stadium: wow, the food. When we were at Parc Au Princes in Paris in 2019, the food choices were less than stellar. Here, though, the Kiwis invited food trucks to come into the stadium and set up shop.

Absolutely brilliant.

The seats could be a bit bigger, but my butt could be a bit smaller. It’s all a trade off.

As always, could do with a few more ladies’ loos, but the line moved, so it wasn’t so bad. I loathe the blow driers (I know they’re eco-friendly, but the bottom of my jeans are even more so… and that way I don’t feel like I’ve had a fresh dose of e-coli blown on my freshly washed mitts.)

The mini-donuts they fry in front of you, pop ten in a bag, pour in cinnamon sugar and shake as you hand over NZ$6 (US$3.66)… hooo, yum. Even drinks were reasonably priced – bottled water NZ$5.50 (US $3.35), add a buck if you want soda.

Beloved’s “Kiwi dog” (mostly bun, Dodger dogs are better) with a helping of fries, US $9 (compare that to Staples (yeah, yeah, CryptoArena.com) $17 for a hot dog) and they really aren’t into price gouging.

For anyone living under a rock, the US lost in penalty kicks. That was a bummer, we were hoping they’d take first in their initial round so we could see them play at least once. On Friday we have tickets to Wellington’s Sky Stadium (now Spain v. Netherlands).

In the interim, we’ve been exploring a bit of Northern NZ. We went over to Waiheke Island, which is gorgeous, to go zip lining… that’s a pile of fun. We tried it in Costa Rica five years ago and had a great time.

Video taping your zip requires a certain amount of finesse, not to mention bravery. I tried balancing my tethered iPhone against my chest to tape the journey down the first line and got a two minute video of my boobs.

Next two lines I held the phone, but that requires NOT holding onto one handle. That’s a little unnerving. The brakes at the end are BRAKES – nothing subtle about those. They said to bring your knees up and grab the rope held out for you. Okay! Can do!

Except on the first line, you’re waiting, waiting, waiting for the brakes and they never seem to come then EEEERK! And someone’s shouting grab the rope grab the rope! Um… well, first I need to lean back over the platform and grab my brain as that seemed to have fallen out when I went from 60km/h to zilch.

However, feeling like my brains fell out was a lot better than the what happened to the fellas. You know how some men… cough… sometimes don’t come to terms with the idea they need a larger size o’ trousers so they just buckle them under their gut?

Noooooot a great idea if you’re zip lining. One guy managed to moon most of the island. Beloved did not notice the orbs approaching above us, being her usual failing-to-notice-mortifying-events-that-occur-to-others self. Me, I was trying not to gouge my eyes out.

Mmmm. We waited to be last for the other two zip lines, so we didn’t witness other arrivals. I can only control myself for so long.

The 1.5km walk back up through the old growth forest was really good, too, except it was up. Flat woulda been nice but I guess that would impact the quality of the zip lines.