Our first day in Auckland came on the back of 30 hours plus in transit with next to no sleep, so as you can imagine we really were not feeling in top condition. On arrival at our hostel our first stop was the shower and how we had missed it. Anyhow what we had left on our first day was spent getting our bearings, or in our case losing our bearings and discovering together we make awful map readers, fortunately the Sky tower was at hand, giving as our first invaluable Auckland lesson 'If your lost follow the Sky Tower', which can pretty much be seen from any point.
This was the summary of our first day however in our tired states we did begin to make some observations about Auckland and New Zealand. The first thing we noticed is that there are many similarities to America, in small things like the roads and the traffic lights, through to the lorries/juggernauts and houses to which Jen kept making comparisons to Hocus Pocus. The second thing is Aucklanders really like to keep fit, down every street was someone jogging, which is in impressive in it’s own right because I am pretty certain there is not one flat road in Auckland and every gym we went past was packed. The third observation being this is a city that has really taken steps to embody the ‘go green for a better future’ policy, with simple things like hybrid taxis, carbon neutral couriers. Finally and I promise to stop boring you with pointless facts, but this one of things that impressed myself (next to the friendliness of the Kiwi’s) and Jen most about Auckland, this being the public services on offer, simple things like; Drinking Fountains dotted around many areas of the city, plenty of public toilets, free city bus (not that we used it) and free dog litter bags that us poor Brits have to pay for.
Moving on, finally, to day two and unfortunately our day was mired by the fact that I was suffering from jet lag. Anyway determined to better the situation, we set off and our first port of call was breakfast, we headed down Ponsonby road which rapidly became one of our favourite areas in Auckland, full of boutique shops, small cafes, stylish restaurants and chic bars. We chose to eat at Santos cafe, which I cannot praise enough. The cappuchino and latte that me and Jen had were definitely amongst the best I have ever had, I had a simple poached eggs on toast, which considering it's just eggs on toast was so tasty and Jen had vege eggs bennedict, which as she said was probably the best breakfast she's ever eaten. From Ponsonby we walked to Mount Eden and started our ascent of Auckland's biggest volcanic cone, unfortunately as we reached the top it started to rain though we still had the chance to take in some of the wonderful views and the massive crater.
We were also giving a friendly reminder of just how far we were away from home.
The descent down from Mt Eden gave me the chance to rest and Jen to get artsy with the camera and surroundings.
We spent some time walking in the gardens at the bottom of Eden before walking back to Ponsonby, on our way back we stumbled across Western Park, which gave us the time to get familiar with some of New Zealand's famed Flora and Fauna.
From Western Park we decided to finally get our first New Zealand grocery shop done. We headed down to the New World supermarket on Franklin road. Our first experience with NZ supermarkets was, well oddly pleasurable. The selection of fruit and veg was amazing and Jen was in awe of the dried fruit pic and mix- we live entertaining lives you see. We also found the staff to be ridiculously friendly and helpful; a sharp contrast to some of our supermarkets at home. Also the cadburys chocolate selection was ridiculous; Tirimasu, black forest and chocolate fudge brownie.... amazing and also cookies and cream kitkat chunkie, truly a gift from above :-) The only two faults I found was 1) Why are cherry tomatoes so expensive? and 2) Where are the vegetarian/magherita pizza's hiding?!
Our evening was spent strolling down the CBD, thinking to ourselves how dead it was in contrast to London for example, we found a Belgian bar and sat down to a couple of beers, though in Jen's case a hot chocolate as they had no Kwak, shame on you Belgian cafe.
Day 3 in Auckland was our most active day, in fact I’m pretty sure we did more walking in this single day than we do in a week in the UK. We set off bright and early towards the Viaduct Harbour where we spent a short amount of time strolling around, watching the world go by. I pounced on the situation and decided to challenge Jen’s photography prowess with one of my own shots, a proud moment for me (though I have to admit my shot wasn’t exactly straight!).
From the Viaduct Harbour we set off for Parnell, which is another district not that dissimilar to Ponsonby. Streets lined with Boutique shops and cafes. After strolling through the streets we decided to walk right around Parnell road and head towards the Auckland Museum, which is an impressive building.
The Auckland museum is impressively laid out, interesting and somewhere where you could easily lose track of time, something we did. Our first stop at the museum was the Maori cultural show, which lasts 30 minutes and gives you a brief look into some Maori pastimes, dances (including the world renowned Haka) and some other brief facts. The show was interesting, however we did feel it would be good if they went a bit further into Maori history, especially for the $20 fee per person (roughly £8). On the other hand the Museum, which has an entrance fee of $5 (£2.10), and this is only a suggested donation, is well worth every penny. The museum is broken down into three floors covering topics ranging from the prehistoric period right through to New Zealand’s history of war including the Boer War and the two World Wars. Though the highlight for me and Jen was the Maori artefacts collection, in particular the carved Maori meeting house.
From the museum we walked back to Parnell where we decided to have dinner at a little pizza place called La Porchetta, here we had a large vegetarian pizza between the two of us for the costly sum of $12 (£5), you would struggle to get a large pizza in the UK for £10 ($23.50). Our evening was then just a simple affair of strolling down Queens Street in the centre of Auckland and window shopping.
Day 4 and our last day in Auckland for now was believe it or not the first day we would use public transport in Auckland, odd for a city that seems to have such good transport links. Anyhow, Devonport was our destination for today. A short 5 - 10 minute ride from Auckland’s ferry port. Devonport is a quaint little town, with not a great deal to do but stop at a café, which of course we did, check some of the heritage sights out or walk down the beach and even though the sun was out it was unbelievably windy, so our beach walking was restricted to just a few minutes.
Onto Mount Victoria, an old navy embankment, once we reached the top, which is only a very short walk, we witnessed some of the best views we had seen in Auckland, especially of Rangitoto island.
Oh, and we found this guy sitting around looking sad, no idea why he’s looking sad, must be the wind.
After our visit to Devonport we wondered around the city and headed up to Albert Park, this gave Jen more chance to wonder around being trigger happy with her camera and myself a chance to soak up the scenery.
Our evening was spent knocking back a few Mojito’s at Whiskey just along Ponsonby road, a nice suave bar with a classic rock soundtrack, you can’t go wrong with a Mojito and Guns N’ Roses. On to Paihia.
No comments:
Post a Comment