You won't want to leave your room: A Junior King Suite with harbour views at InterContinental Auckland. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
You won't want to leave your room: A Junior King Suite with harbour views at InterContinental Auckland. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
Being a parent is great and all, but when the opportunity arises to spend one night — alone — at Auckland’s flashiest new hotel, you jump at the chance, writes Anna Sarjeant
I’ll be able to use the toilet without a small, 2ft man coming in ...
... is my first, ecstatic thought when presented with the opportunity to spend one night alone at the new Auckland InterContinental.
Alone being the word that gets my heart fluttering.
I can barely suppress my smile when my husband says he’ll stay home with our toddler.
The latter is the same chap who won’t allow me to use the bathroom in private; sticks his head in when I shower; allows coffee breaks, but only if I simultaneously build Hot Wheels; uses me like a human playground when I’m sweeping (his) crumbs off the floor.
I hear “one night” and I actually hear this: One night to binge-watch TV; one night to crank up obscenity-littered songs; one night to take a hot bath without pirate toys; one night to drink cocktails; one night to eat in peace — and not worry where all the knives have gone.
I do all of the above, and for one night only it’s absolute bliss.
Junior King Suite with harbour views at InterContinental Auckland. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
The experience starts with something I haven’t done since birthing a child — I linger. I dawdle from my office to the hotel, a 10-minute walk transformed into an indulgent stroll. Then I mosey around the flash stores at Commercial Bay and for no explicable reason, other than it feels overpriced and indulgent, I buy a Starbucks.
All this and it’s not yet 6pm, such is the beauty of a shiny new hotel privy to the convenience of Downtown’s slickest shops. In fact, the InterContinental Auckland has two entrances, one off Quay St and the other directly from Commercial Bay. You can practically roll out of H&M and into your bed. As I did.
Correction. I had every intention of partaking in a pre-dinner nap, but when I opened the door to my Junior King Suite, I had a breakdown. It’s an implosion of excitement at my new surroundings, of which there isn’t a Crayola-stained cushion in sight.
It’s a giddyish reaction to a bedroom. Firstly, it’s enormous. The bathroom alone is the size of a standard hotel room. There’s also a stand-alone bathtub (always confirmation that you’ve hit the hotel jackpot) with views across the harbour and handsome ferry building.
Where most hotels like to display wallpaper, the InterContinental Auckland has upped the ante with floor-to-ceiling windows. Only one interior wall, for obvious reasons, plays its part as a regular wall. The rest of the room is glass, drenching the suite in jaw-dropping views.
There’s also a separate seating area and two TVs, one of which I don’t notice until I start pressing knobs and it dramatically rises out of a concealed cabinet like the risen dead.
That’s the key to making the most of your stay here: press buttons.
One push here and the blinds descend: blackout so you can sleep like a baby. Another prod there and music starts playing in the bathroom. I immediately fill the tub to the rim, add complimentary bath salts and blast out the tunes of my youth until my skin wrinkles.
No one bursts in with a Nerf blaster. It’s marvellous.
A stand-alone bathtub is always confirmation that you’ve hit the hotel jackpot. Photo / Anna Sarjeant
By nightfall, I’m hooked up to Netflix via Chromecast, but it’s time to dine at Advieh, the hotel’s on-site restaurant with chef Gareth Stewart at the helm. Very much leaning away from the usual hotel-restaurant paradigms, Advieh may well be an InterContinental attachment, but this up-and-comer is paving its own way — without any of “mum and dad’s” input.
When I arrive, Advieh is heaving. Aucklanders can sniff out a hot new venue better than a bloodhound in a rabbit hole. I settle in for the cocktail I promised myself and keep one eye on the menu; one on the ebbs and flows of a restaurant at full pump.
New restaurant Advieh is the hottest new place to dine in Auckland.
There’s an art to waiting tables. A certain “bedside manner” is required; the ability to put your patrons at ease; think fast on your feet with a quip when needed. It’s improv with a side serving of culinary wizardry and the team at Advieh work the room like seasoned vets.
Likewise, head chef Stewart commands the open-plan kitchen with equal parts passion and performance. What’s a chef without charisma? Advieh is the culinary meeting of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavours, while the staff and kitchen deliver a palpable, addictive energy.
I pay respects to my forgotten husband and channel his go-to dining tactic: ask the waitstaff what they recommend, which results in me picking four items I’d never normally choose.
The smaller items are tapas-sized and I pick steak tartare followed by crispy scampi in a nest of kataifi. Then arrives chicken liver baklava, a sweet-meets-savoury sensation. Next is an enormous plate of lamb’s neck. For someone who regularly announces the ease with which I could “go vege”, my inner carnivore is salivating at every mouthful.
My reward for going off-piste and following waitstaff advice? An eyes-roll-back-in-the-skull kind of meal.
Cocktail with ferry building views at Advieh restaurant, InterContinental Auckland.
Somewhere between leaving Advieh at 8.30pm and 6am the following morning, I fall into a deep sleep, waking to find a gargantuan cruise ship practically parked outside the window.
For breakfast, I gorge on scrambled eggs and a bevy of continental options, and while nursing a flat white I wonder what my boys might be up to.
Right about now, hostile negotiations will be underway between a milk-bribing adult and a naked toddler refusing to conform to clothes.
One night of luxury versus 364 days of utter madness. Both are five star, albeit for quite different reasons.
