Auckland, New Zealand
On the way west, I had a pit stop in LA at a BBQ to end all BBQ’s at a mansion in the Pacific Palisades overlooking Santa Monica beach. In this rather large hacienda-type house, I walked into a bedroom (which I thought was a hallway) and this big dog came after me. I barely got out. I didn’t go to Singapore on this trip because I was afraid of being quarantined by some border guard overzealous over the SARS epidemic; imagine if I had come all mussed up to Australia because I walked into a dog at a BBQ.

Air New Zealand has nice lounges and runs a good airline with Megatop 747's (take the right aisle exit row upstairs because it is behind crew seating with tons of space before the next row), and the ride upstairs is definitely smoother than the ride in the back of the bus. Vegetarian food was good. Main problem with Kiwi Air is that their business class seats do not recline much and Quantas now has these sleeper seats that at least give you a decent chance to get some sleep during the long trip. At least they are friendly; I will talk about the Most Un-Friendly Skies of United a bit later.

My fiancé flew Quantas and had a long security line at Los Angeles in the main international terminal; Air N.Z. flies out of Terminal 2 which was very quiet and there wasn’t a soul in the check-in area when I arrived an hour before the flight which left at 11:30pm. From LAX to Auckland, you fly 12½ hours but it works out that you arrive at 7am and, when you work out the time change, it is a 5 hour difference moving backward, so that it is equivalent to have been flying westward from london to new york. From Auckland to Sydney you pick up an additional 2 hours going further west. That’s not really too bad jet-lag wise. Latitudes are 34 degrees south for Sydney and 38 for Auckland, roughly the Carolinas to Mid-Atlantic to you and me. The long flights are not so much east-west as north-south.

Airports here are very nice, and I arrive just as sun is coming up and the colors all around are pretty. Volcanos and islands dot the dawnscape on the mysterious descent. Hello New Zealand. Driver is Egyptian and he is quite happy living away from the rest of the world’s problems. It’s a 40 minute drive into town with rush hour traffic and I check into the Heritage Auckland Hotel, a preservation property once the main department store. Now there isn’t a large department store in town but several shopping districts. Hotel rooms are spacious with kitchens. Television features singing penguins, and radio discussion is of local concerns and a Kiwi view of the world. Lots of Asians walking on the streets; they live in Auckland and are not tourists. Outside Auckland it is more would-be Australians who made a wrong left turn. As I walk around center city, this red car keeps driving around making a racket and there is no police anywhere. People here can be a bit bored and seem to crave thrills. Lots of opportunities for bungee jumping, bridge climbing, parachute drop from the city tower, adventures in the rural areas. Someone had a reverse-bungee jumping ride operating in center city, where you sit in a seat and then cables pull you up in the air at close to 200 miles per hour. I didn’t see one person go on the ride the 2 days I was there. Newspapers are provocative: the main paper had a front page headline with a politician calling another politician a “dickhead.” Their parliament is nicknamed the Beehive. Accents are a bit more distinct than Australia, which I was surprised didn’t have lots of accent. At least not in Sydney. Also, not a lot of flag-flying here. I saw few flags in either of the two countries.

Pretty walking areas and parks, clean city, good roads though they need more roads and are building them. A bit hilly and tedious walking, city looks and feels like Seattle, but May-June is an excellent climate for walking with temperatures in the 60's and 70's and a mix of sun and clouds with intermittent rainshowers that come and go quickly. Good service with a smile and tips are not expected. The Sheraton is a good 15 minute walk away from center city. The Heritage was a fine full-service hotel with a nice atrium restaurant (except no BBC, only CNN) located close to center city shopping and the casino, but an even better choice might be the Sebel Suites right on the Viaduct harbour-front, where rooms are close to the water and you have a suite. Rates are quite agreeable; I paid about $80 USD a night at the Heritage with travel agent rate and could have had the Sheraton for $60. Hilton is on the water but I thought it was cold, overly chic and you have to walk through a long and dark wind-tunnel to get in and out of there. It seems the hotels and restaurants here are going out of their way to be royally hip.

A good restaurant is Kermadec Ocean right above Viaduct Harbor reached from the corner of Hobbs Street. I had a whole local fish topped with coconut, pineapple and rice. Prices are very reasonable because local prices are not pegged to US Dollars and the exchange rate is roughly 1.5:1 (meaning $21 NZ equals $14 US). Visited the City Tower with great panoramas (best viewed in the morning; the volcano overlooking the city is in the glare of the sun all day so it is not a factor), the Museum of Auckland (many types of exhibits plus it is the country’s war memorial – problematic for a country that has always sent people to die in other country’s wars whose people couldn’t find New Zealand on a map), Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater Adventure (go in heated tram to see an Antarctic landscape with penguins and walk along a moving sidewalk enveloped on the sides and overhead by water with sharks and all kinds of interesting fish). With taxis, I got all this done by noon. Then to lunch and a 35 minute ferry to Waiheke Island for an hour mini-bus tour. Very pretty island of 8,000 residents with beautiful coastlines, mountains, vegetation and land good for growing olives and grapes. Half a million bucks will buy you a house with a gorgeous view. Sunset is at 5pm this time of year. Dinner at the casino buffet which was the only casino buffet I’ve ever been to that had lots of food that was also good food.

Leaving New Zealand there is a NZ$25 airport tax to pay. Business class has its own pavillion for checking in, which is a nice touch. The airport club was impressive with lots of art, food and space. I got upgraded at the gate which was good since the flight was full and I had a late change of plans. Something to know: I had bought a ticket which turned out to have been someone’s frequent flyer award ticket that had been sold to me. I didn’t know about this at the time I bought the ticket. These tickets are a pain. First, they are illegal and can be confiscated. Second, once you begin the itinerary, they cannot be changed for any reason, not even for standby travel. That is ridiculous on a business-class ticket which, for 105,000 miles, is not exactly chopped liver. Even if the price is $4,500 instead of $8,000. A tip: There are circle-pacific fares which let you go for $4,500 if you stop somewhere in Asia (which I wouldn’t do this time around because of the SARS hysteria) or $7,000 if you go Round the World. The direct flights to and from Australia are monopoly-priced at about $9,000 in business class because there is low supply and low demand yielding few but full flights. 

When I left JFK, there were only 2 people at the airport checking in United business class passengers for the whole terminal and the lines were half an hour long. I could have gone to a kiosk but I needed a ticket change. The concierge in the airport club couldn’t do anything and I would have wound up starting my itinerary without the ticket I wanted unless I went back out and convinced someone at the deserted First Class counter to take care of me. I wound up getting into a fight on the line because after waiting half an hour for an agent who turned out not to have a computer terminal for ticketing changes, the agent just put me into another line and didn’t give me any kind of priority. United has become absolutely horrible about enforcing rules to the letter, phone hold times are long, and it is consistently short-staffed at airports; the passenger is the enemy. The flight was OK, but it also matters which plane you are on; the flight west from NY to LAX was cramped with no personal entertainment system and the flight eastward was spacious with a system. This sounds petty but if you are paying the same fare all around for business class, you need to know that the quality of the services offered are not consistent to all flights and aircraft and this is just as important as scheduling if you are paying for this stuff and not getting it. It is not just with United that this last point is relevant; the same is true for American and Continental. But it is war right now at United for anything having to do with customer service or having to deal with them at the airport; I would not recommend anyone with a choice to fly on United until they turn things around.

On the flight to Sydney they gave out real knives with lunch. Feeling removed from the Real World? Next day I read in the local paper about an Aussie who hijacked a domestic flight. They put his picture on the front page. This was a big event that had not happened maybe since forever. He looked like such a nice guy. The headline said “Mr. Nice Guy.” Turned out he was angry about his job and girlfriend. He didn’t get far; he was overpowered by a flight steward. I sat next to this big Chassidic guy who is a partner in one of the world’s largest dairy companies and who spends lots of time in this region producing milk products. Brings 60 chasidic jews from Sydney to Auckland a few times a year to do kosher milk manufacturing. A big business. My noontime flight to Sydney was about 3 hours and we circled forests on the edge of Sydney before touching down around 2pm (after picking up 2 hours going west). Lots of pretty houses near the airport and I am staying in Maroubra suburb, about 15 minutes drive from the airport. 

Sydney, Australia

Visited Bondi beach area, popular among tourists for surfing and partying. It is also a Jewish area with a community center supported by a lobby casino and the area features several kosher restaurants, shops and takeout places. My niece-to-be liked her present, a green raincoat with a big frog on it. Visit the website of the shop of the Museum of Natural History in New York City; these raincoats are really cute and are selling like hotcakes at the museum. Here it is winter and this means it is 60's and 70's by day, and 40's and 50's at night. Slept with a heater on. They sell 3-ply toilet paper here; something I don’t even see in America. Hmm, that is definitely a sign of a sophisticated society, dontcha think? They also have these funny looking light-switches and thick doors with high doorknobs (good for keeping children in their places). TV has lots of short commercials and one international channel showing a potpourri of programs from around the world. 

Sightseeing began with a 20 minute bus ride into town and a visit to the Centrepoint Tower, the local observation tower, which also has a tourist visiting area with sound and light exhibits and a shaking chair ride that gives you some big-screen thrills. Sydney’s main shopping streets border a pretty park and war memorial that provide a bit of green backdrop. The Great Synagogue is roughly next to the David Jones department store, the city’s fashionable shopping place. Bought a pair of sheepskin house-slippers as a souvenir. Circular Quay (pronounced key) is a nice place to walk around near the Harbour, and we lunched along the waterfront across from the famous opera house (looks like the new exhibition center in Hong Kong). Ferries pass by. A good restaurant here is Soul. Lots of kids in their school uniforms with interesting looking hats. I went into a store selling uniforms to buy one for my nephew and another more Crocodile-Dundee looking hat for dad for Father’s Day. Another area right here is the Rocks, a historic area undergoing gentrification. Here are galleries, and lots of little shops. The challenge here is to get a nice view of the Harbour Bridge. The Hyatt is right here. Climb the stairs near the promenade entrance to the Hyatt at the end of the row of properties along the waterfront across from the opera house to get the best view of the bridge as well as the downtown skyline. Ended up at a French pastisserie; the chocolate pistachio cake was excellent. Lucky weather since I’ve arrived with cloudless skies; before I came was 2 weeks of lousy weather I was told. As in New Zealand, prices for food, laundry (same day service exists), taxis and services range from reasonable to very reasonable.

It is now sabbath and the emphasis this weekend is on doing the family thing. The reason for this trip is my engagement to a local gal, and there will be an engagement party this weekend. The local Maroubra Synagogue announced our engagement; the rabbi and his wife were very warm to us and every few minutes someone kept walking up to me telling me how good of a girl Karen is. I was beginning to think they might quarantine me at the airport permanently. The synagogue’s rabbi is Moroccan and his wife is Rhodesian; they moved to Sydney about a dozen years ago and built up the synagogue from a sleeper to a happening place. It is a neighborhood that is very familiar to those who live in the midwest US and where the local Jewish attitude is centrist and sensible – we are not MegaFrum or MeshuganaFrum (slangs for wacko orthodox). The Sydney  community of 40,000 supports day schools that have excellent international reputations; the most popular sits on 40 acres and has about 1,200 students. Still, it is a small community with not many choices though happily the few choices that exist are good ones. Melbourne has a larger community and I will likely visit Melbourne on my next trip. That afternoon we took my niece-to-be to the park and she wanted to hold my hand walking back. I guess that means I am in!

Saturday night we visited one of Karen’s friends at their spanking new house. New construction here is very good. We attended a party thrown for us by Karen’s friends. I found out about quite a few Australians who monitor Global Thoughts. At this party was the Strangest Moment. Lots of Australians come from European origins, particularly Germanic. Hungarians are also part of the mix. My grandfather was Hungarian; my grandmother was Czech (but many of her relatives considered her Hungarian, particularly when they wanted to get her goat – to which she would retort: I am NOT Hungarian; I am Czech). I told of my Hungarian ancestry and people were interested to know more. I told them I could sing a song in Hungarian; Solo Coco Shma,  it is called. Well, there were some older people there and they wanted the goods. So I sang the song. Video cameras came out of nowhere to record this. After I sang it once, some of the older folk wanted me to sing it again. Slowly, this time and we want to see this carefully. Now they were in my face, scrutinizing me as I slowly sang this little folk ditty about a red cock-rooster. Well, they were wowed. I am really doing great this weekend. Can you believe I was fated to remember a little folk song taught to me by my grandmother 25 years ago so that I could sing it at an engagement festivity in Sydney, Australia? I got my two cents in though. Karen and I, every time we go to some Jewish gathering, are feted by people who feel this urge to sing the same engagement songs, almost by rote. So I put a stop to it and asked the party-goers if they could sing us a round of that great Aussie song, Waltzin’ Matilda which, like the Star Spangled Banner, everyone seems to know except that nobody ever knows most of the words. So they took a stab at it, and eventually managed to figure out the words. Now that’s a song that gets better with each round of drinks. Just in case you ever wanted to know, the song is about a sheep thief who gets caught and chooses to commit suicide rather than give up his sheep to the police. Well, at 11 we claimed Cinderella and ran out of there because the next morning was the engagement party brunch at the Royal Motor Yacht Club on Sydney Harbour, a very pretty venue right on the waterfront. Meet and Greet, buffet lunch, speeches and photos, about 80 in attendance. In the evening, Karen and I went to Watson Bay to Doyles Seafood restaurant, a local institution existing since the early 1800's. The menu describes the various fish; I had the John Dory fish. They also feature Jewfish. Sit on the upper level for the best views. You can also reach it by ferry from Circular Quay.

Monday we drove around looking for something with 12 year old maps. This is when you notice how many roads have been built over the past decade here. Infrastructure is good and you might be disappointed after such a lot of flying to see everything in English and being first-rate, though Sydney has a bit of a European accent and a good amount of spit and polish amid a very pleasant surrounding. It gets hot in the summer here (though not humid but still hot), so this time of year for me was quite lovely to visit even though it chills out at night. I was a bit lucky with almost all sun; May averages 11 days of rain. Many chains of shops exist both in Australia and New Zealand (the two countries seem to coordinate a lot, even officially) and of course the Americans are well represented everywhere you look. However, the country feels itself linked to Asia. Japanese is the first choice second-language taken in schools.

Lunch at Bee Dee’s in Double Bay (or is that Double Pay) shopping district. Afternoon tea at a lovely sprawling house bordering a national forest. The resident is a lady in her 80's, quite industrious and energetic, who founded and runs an internationally acclaimed center in conflict resolution. Sunset over the forest as we drove back to home base; Sydney has a tunnel which does wonders at connecting various parts of the city and shortening commutes, but it is privately owned and one of the rather pricey things here. Visited a brownstone-like apartment in a trendy neighborhood of Sydney; the streets were built for horses and there is little parking. Many types of communities enjoy calling Sydney home and it is not a country that forces a melting pot. Dinner at the community center in Bondi with very good home-style food. Got an Aussie-style sweater at the duty-free shop exiting the country and picked up a boomerang for my sister-in-law for good measure.

It is now Tuesday morning. After flying 2:30 to Auckland, stopping over 2 hours and then flying another 11:30 to LAX, I will arrive at the same time I left. So far so good. This trip went as well as possibly could have been expected and even better. Now I have to be in Los Angeles dealing with my parents, brother, his wife and kids. But first, I am incommunicado for 2 days in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel pretending to be a movie star. I am not telling anyone where I am so that nobody can call me, and the cellphone is shut off. Every time I come to LA I always am stuck with family, so this time I just want to have a bit of fun and enjoy the city.

48 Hours in Beverly Hills

Here they wear white on white at the tennis court and announce every serve. I walk on Rodeo Drive and hear this woman screaming into her cellphone “We do not see eye to eye; I am NOT your friend” and then she slams her car door. Yes, we are in California country. I have the hotel’s courtesy car (turns out to be a stretch limo) drive me to the drycleaner because I can’t see any sense in paying the hotel $13 to launder a shirt (even though I am paying close to $500 a night to stay there with the taxes) – driver said he’s been there 6 years and nobody ever asked him to take him to the cleaners and I believe him since he went searching for one. I said well, you’ve had lots of interesting people here and I suppose you’ll never forget me either now. Most guests here don’t think anything of money – Beluga caviar heads up the menu at the lobby lounge at $140 per ounce and I was told that many guests order it. Wayne Gretzky devours the stuff. The staff will tell you many stories if you engage them. That alone can be worth the price of admission, if you care for this stuff.

Lots of really nice homes here and many of them can be viewed right from the streets. I think it’s a bit nuts to spend a few million bucks on a house and be right on a road with lots of traffic but land is expensive here and you make do with what you’ve got. I’ve seen nice neighborhoods around the world, but LA is quite impressive in that there are so many nice houses one after the other, many with tennis courts and rear-access roads. Kuwait, for example, has about 50 nice houses which are very nice but that’s it. Strangely, people are not terribly paranoid about security. Few houses have armed patrols and many do not have burglar alarms or bars all around the windows. Of course, there are huge estates away from the main streets and these are on a different level altogether. Dinner at the hotel’s Polo Lounge, featuring a flash of Asian-fusion cookery with interesting ingredients, not the typical hotel food. Actually, food and beverage at this hotel is quite reasonable and I am told they do a good amount of local business. They were advertising some interesting wine tasting dinners later this month – 4 courses and several wines for $95 including tax and tip, which is very reasonable for that. Breakfast can be taken at the pool or at the patio adjoining the Polo Lounge. The bungalows are in the hotel’s garden; there are rooms in the main building but they do not have the ambience of a villa surrounded by gardens, fountains and the heritage of all these quirky celebrities who have inhabited these villas before. It is a good hotel that is very service oriented and has been fully renovated; my room was 1B which was excellently located right at the entrance to the gardens just beyond the Polo Lounge patio. The hotel pays its employees the highest salaries, but they are always looking for tips. Yet this is true everywhere and it is unfortunate that hotel staff seem to be always longing for tips. But they do manage to instill a feeling in their guests that this is not just a hotel but also a property that people should want to return to and feel a part of. The only other hotel in LA with bungalows is the Bel-Air and that is not as centrally located or as nice.

I am without a car and taxis are expensive because distances are long but it is still cheaper than renting a car. It is interesting to walk around and get the local flavor; the hotel is 20 minutes walk from Rodeo Drive shopping area. There is no pedestrian path to the hotel; everybody drives in and out. One day I went to the Getty Museum. It is a 15 minute ride from the hotel, you then take a tram up the mountain to the museum. Allow almost 2 hours to see this large museum spread out over 5 very interesting looking buildings and several pretty gardens that you will want to walk through. The views of LA are quite impressive. A lot of work went into the architecture here. The art is not the greatest I’ve ever seen but it is infinitely more fun (and the art was more enjoyable to view and they explain the items well here) than the Uffizi in Florence, for example. Kids are welcome and seem to have a good time. The museum is free but to park your car requires a reservation; it is not a bad idea to come by taxi. Dinner at Pat’s Kosher Restaurant; best value for your dollar in a kosher restaurant anywhere and you will find really nice salads and some good deserts. The main courses were very good, but not that spectacular. There are more good restaurants in existence today, and some of them in New York are equivalent to Pat’s, but definitely more expensive. An interesting new place to visit in LA is the Grove right next to the old Farmer’s Market, next to CBS studios in the Fairfax area. Very pleasant place to go with kids and the stand serving hot dogs right by the center fountain is kosher too! It is part shopping mall, part hang-out place with a Main Street USA kinda feel with fountains, trolleys and kiosks.

Well, it’s been quite an excursion for 10 days. Gotta go home so I can have some place to go away from again. Won’t be long now.

For photos, click here.