A long week­end away provides the per­fect oppor­tun­ity to re-exam­ine the age-old battle. In our first chapter, our agent goes to Auck­land. In our next chapter, an enemy agent will come here…

Air­port access: Get­ting to Wel­ling­ton Air­port, from Thorndon via a quick stop in Hataitai to pick up my suit­case took less than half an hour, and the only cost was some grov­el­ling to my moth­er. Get­ting to the CBD of Auck­land via a shuttle took an hour and cost $26 – that’s 15 minutes longer than the actu­al flight, and only $13 less than the tick­et. Wel­ling­ton 1, Auck­land 0.

Air­ports: Wel­ling­ton air­port has only one ter­min­al, which is bliss­fully fast food chain-free and it’s a sexy big space. You can get Fuel cof­fee, and Wish­bone food (which caters to a wide range of diet­ary require­ments) but it’s loud and bustly, and the stools they have at coun­ters are shiny met­al and you slip off them. Mean­while, Auck­land Air­port may have Bur­ger King and Mac­Don­alds, but they also have a juice bar with those posh award-win­ning recov­er­able design style chairs. A tie.

Quadrant hallwayThe hotel: With a spe­cial Wotif.com mys­tery deal, my ‘stu­dio’ at The Quad­rant was $99 per night. That’s $8 less than the $107 I pay in rent per week, but the whole stu­dio, includ­ing kit­chen and bath­room was approx­im­ately the size of my bed­room. It was much much tidi­er though, and, as a spe­cial bonus, I dis­covered I could watch TV from the toi­let. Why would I ever need to leave? The Quad­rant makes a big deal about its archi­tec­ture, and they’re right, it is pretty sexy. I guess the nearest equi­val­ent to it in Wel­ling­ton would be the new Hol­i­day Inn, but I’ve nev­er been in it, and appar­ently its toi­let doors freak people out, so I guess I’m going to have to call Auck­land the win­ner on this one. 1 all.

Enter­tain­ment: I went up to Auck­land to see Muse play, and if someone had giv­en me a free tick­et, I would gladly have gone along to Justin Tim­ber­lake as well. In addi­tion, I got to go to the wrest­ling at the Lyn­field YMCA, have lots of spas, and watch naked chicks on the tele­vi­sion in my hotel room. Fine, Auck­land gets the enter­tain­ment points. This time.

canton foodEat­ing: A key fea­ture of any trip to Auck­land is assem­bling a large group of my friends to gorge ourselves silly at Can­ton in Kings­land. Wel­ling­ton, quite frankly, does not have a Chinese res­taur­ant that makes me drool this much. But the cof­fee is uni­ver­sally bet­ter than that which I drank at the hotel cafe, Glor­ia and Rueben, and cof­fee is import­ant. Des­pite all the boom­ing growth around Symonds Street, there’s still not a huge range of cafes in the area, so I’m going to have to give this one to Wel­ling­ton.

Drink­ing: The choice of bars to go to in Kings­land after din­ner at Can­ton was either Ruby – a small bar play­ing hits of the ’80s very loudly, or the big hulk­ing Kingslander, with a TV screen in every single line of sight, affect­ing con­ver­sa­tion. And yes, that’s right, I’m going to judge all Auck­land bars on what was avail­able in Kings­land. Wel­ling­ton for the win, again!

Final res­ult: Wel­ling­ton 3, Auck­land 2. It’s good to be home.