Auckland Day 2

Up early this morning and went for an awesome complimentary buffet breakfast at our hotel - enough food for at least the whole day!! From there, we went back on our hop on bus, and actually hopped off this time - ha ha! Our first stop was at the Michael Joseph Savage Memorial at Bastion Point, a historic reserve remembered in New Zealand for its role in 1970’s Maori protests against forced land alienation by non-Maori New Zealanders. Beautiful park there with some amazing flowers! From there, we took a short downhill walk to the town of Mission Bay - a pretty seaside place with a lovely beach and lots of funky stores and restaurants. Of course, we had to go back uphill to get back to our bus, so got a good workout doing that, and hopefully wearing off some of that breakfast! Next stop was at the Auckland Museum, a stunning building on lovely grounds. This past week has been a celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Armistice, and the museum had a beautiful display of white crosses to commemorate the over 18,000 New Zealanders killed in WW1. It was quite touching to read the information posted! Especially that about families who had lost 3 or 4 family members (mostly brothers) in the war. We then walked down to the Winter Garden, (passing a field with numerous cricket games going on - confusing sport!!) and viewed some more beautiful plants and flowers either from the region, or brought in to flourish here. From there, we finished the”red line” bus tour, then got on the “blue line” to visit an interesting area called Ponsonby - touted as one of Auckland’s “hippest” suburbs with boutiques chic cafes, bars and restaurants. Walked around there for about an hour before hopping back on to the bus back to our hotel. This evening, we saw there was going to be a night market just down the street from where we are staying, so we headed there around 7pm. I had envisioned a typical night market with vendors selling a plethora of items, but it was all food - and pretty amazing food from all corners of the earth! After stuffing ourselves on multiple ethnic gastronomic delights, we went for a long walk to wear at least a small amount off! Stopped for a glass of wine on the way back to the hotel, and are now hunkering down for the night in anticipation of a long day tomorrow when we get on another big bird for our new destination! Next stop - Melbourne, Australia!Read more