Auckland - Day 1

Auckland marks the end of another leg of the ATW cruise. Passengers will disembark and a new group will come on board. According to GM Lauren we are expecting some 300 new passengers and will be sailing at full capacity to Papeete. It’ll be interesting to see how that impacts dining and service in general.

We were up early and ready to head out for a day in Auckland. Liz and I had identified several sites we wanted to see and things to do. It’s a convenient port for a big city: we were docked at Princes wharf, which is right downtown. No shuttle bus needed and you can walk right off the ship and onto Queen Street. So that’s exactly what we did.

We walked up Queen Street to “K street,” more properly Karangahape Road. This is an older part of town and has some funky shops and restaurants. We stumbled upon Symonds Street Cemetery, an old cemetery with classic headstones and graves from the 19th century. Some of the headstones were covered in a mix of green and orange lichen, giving them a colorful look on a gray day.

As we walked along K street we came across a pie store called PieFee and could not resist, so we shared a small blueberry-apple pie at 9:30 in the morning. We went back down Queen Street, cutting through Myers Park, which had a playground that the boys took advantage of despite the wet conditions. Then we made our way over to the Auckland Art Gallery. We hadn’t taken in much art over the course of the trip and this was a good opportunity to do so. The most striking bit to me was an exhibit by a New Zealand born photographer. He had taken many photographs of Samoan people who were coming to New Zealand in the 70’s looking for work, focusing on their tattoos, which are a bit part of Samoan culture. What struck me was how this forced the photographer to think about his identity as a New Zealander as compared to the identity of the Samoans and their long lineage of Pacific Islanders. There were other good installations and exhibits as well. It was a small enough museum to see all of it, and it was free!

After the museum it was time for lunch and we headed to Gorilla Kitchen, which advertises itself as “100% vegan fast food.” We had some tasty faux-chicken sandwiches, a vegan hot dog, and a falafel burger along with some fries. Good stuff. Then we went back over to Albert Park, which was pretty and more formal than Myers Park. It was also on the way to Unity Books, which I wanted to see as it was coming up as many people’s favorite Auckland bookstore. It was a bit of a disappointment as it was pretty small. We didn’t spend a lot of time there.

There were two more things on our agenda: get some ice cream and hit up “Holey Moley” for some mini golf. For the ice cream we went to Giapo, which has become Instagram famous for their elaborate ice cream cones. Liz and I shared a 2-flavor cup of blueberry-lemon and dark chocolate, which was very good. DJ had cookies and cream in a chocolate cone and Thomas had dark chocolate in a chocolate cone. It was all good, but rather extravagantly priced. I think the Internet fame has pumped up the pricing.

We then attempted to walk off the ice cream and pie with a game of mini golf. Holey Moley is really a bar with a miniature golf course inside it, but during the day it’s family friendly and it was indoor mini golf, which was nice on a drizzly day. We played our nine holes, with the boys tying for the win. Then we took a circuitous course along the docks back to Insignia. We wound up with a pretty good step count to weigh against our rather excessive calorie intake for the day.

Later tonight there’s a screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that Thomas and I plan to attend. Not sure if DJ will make it for this one or not. Tomorrow is another day in Auckland.Читать далее