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.