Mission Bay, Baby

As some of you know and as was hinted at in the last post, Amanda and I have had to move again. Our housemates, since May, have decided to move to Nice, France and so we needed to find a new place to live. They originally thought they would be leaving for France the first week of the new year and so we had approx 6 weeks to find somewhere else. A little daunting given how long it had taken us to find them and how little was on the market in our budget and more importantly somewhere we wanted to live! One reason for moving to NZ was to spend more time outdoors and ideally, in order to be "living the dream" we wanted a place near the beach.

Amanda's shifts were not kind so I was charged with viewing potential flats. Thankfully I only had to view two. The first seemed very nice, the second awful. Along with everyone else at the viewing I entered an application to rent the first flat. We then had to wait what seemed like forever for a response - but was in fact only 3 days.

Lady luck, she must have been smiling on us - we beat the competition and were soon signing a 12 month lease on our first place together - be that the UK or NZ. A couple of days later and Amanda could view the flat for the first time!

I had to make a snap judgement on the flat and now that we have been living here a couple of weeks, I think I did pretty well. Apparently Amanda trusts my decisions now!

View of Rangitoto from the end of our street

Palm lined front of our block

View our of our Kitchen - sea view possible with the right angle

The only concerns at the time were, one, it's a flat - would it be noisy? And two, the kitchen. It's tiny - but a perfect excuse to improve our Mise en place.

Thankfully, while a little noisier than our last abode, it has proved pretty quiet despite being a block of flats and despite being one road back from the busy village centre. The building itself is afforded a slight Mediterranean feel by it's orange tiled roofs.

The previous tenants (Kiwis who had moved there from Brighton!) had been there for 2 years and it was completely refurbished just before they move in - we have a bathroom that would make Faye Kidd proud; and a load of new white goods. It's on the first (top) floor and we have a gas cooker again (yeay!).

We've managed to furnish it by making some pretty sweet purchases on TradeMe, the pick of which must be our solid wood dining table. The chairs, brought separately need a little love but that is going to be a little side project...

The flat lets in loads of light, but not direct sunlight so it's bright, yet cool. Best of all however, is the location. We are set just one road back from the seafront and so the flat is filled with fresh sea air :0)

The beach itself is just a 90 seconds walk away; and that would be less if there was not a road to cross.

Mission Bay is a little like Brighton in some respects. It's a lively place and sometimes it can seem like half of Auckland is visiting. That said, even then, it's still nowhere near as busy as Brighton on a sunny day.There's loads of cafe's, bar's and restaurants on the strip and even a cinema.

The beach, sandy of course, with great views of Rangitoto and the city, is backed by lawns shaded by Pohutukawa and fir trees. It's great for swimming and we can also hire paddleboards, windsurfers etc.

Finally, it's an easy 8km cycle to work along the seafront - although it can a be a little harder when the wind gets up!