Thursday, Feb 20th, Auckland, New Zealand

Greetings!

After 16 hours flying, we arrived in Auckland, New Zealand on Wednesday night around 10:00 pm.  Retrieving our luggage and the rental car, the sim card we bought at the airport, and Google Maps, got us to our B&B just in time to check in with our host, and finally fall asleep.

Today, we walked a couple of blocks to the Metro subway line, and rode it to downtown Auckland's Central Station.   A few blocks walk along the harbor, past the old Ferry bldg, we purchase tickets to the Hop-on, hop-off city tour bus for  two days.  Included is a free ticket to the top of the Sky Tower, the tallest free-standing structure in the southern hemisphere.  We'll see it tomorrow night, when the 90,000 lights on the Auckland Harbor Bridge are lit up.

The next best thing to reading the travel books written about a city you're visiting is to take a city bus tour.  It's not a substitute, but it gives you a chance to place all those esoteric little facts you think you read about the city into real images.  And decide which things are worth getting off the bus and looking closer at.  Today, it was the Auckland War Memorial Museum. 

Two special exhibits caught our attention containing pieces of art and village life for the last 5,000 years from the Maori and Polynesian cultures.  We were just in time for a performance of Maori history, and then walked through its large rooms filled with fascinating artifacts and stories.

Climbing back aboard the tour bus, we made our way to the train station.  Nearby, we found a great restaurant for dinner (Ortolanda), and an excellent Sauvignon blanc (Little Darling).

To see the rest of the few photos we took, click on: Thursday, Feb 20th, Auckland, New Zealand