Ringing in 2007 21 Hours Before Seattle!

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Auckland is not the place to spend New Year's Eve. Everyone goes on vacation to the beach, the city is like a ghost town! Many businesses and restaurants are closed for an entire two week period at the holidays. We should have planned to be in Sydney for New Year's - oh well. In Auckland, we stayed at the SkyCity Hotel right next to the Sky Tower. Picture the Stratosphere in Las Vegas and you get a good idea of what the Sky Tower looks like. At midnight, fireworks shot out of the top of the tower over the crowd (not that big a crowd) below. It was pretty cool but not any bigger than the celebrations at the Space Needle. You can actually jump off the top of the Sky Tower, connected to a cable that slows your fall near the end of the descent.

Since so much was closed, we walked down to Viaduct Harbor for most of our meals. Situated next to a marina, this neighborhood is full of restaurants with outdoor seating and menus to suit any taste. We quickly learned that tipping is not expected in restaurants in New Zealand. I handed the waitress a few dollars in change the first day and she thanked me but looked at me like I was nuts! We did not like the fact that most restaurants charged a 15% "holiday surcharge" on the 1st of January AND the 2nd of January. Since when is the 2nd even a holiday?!?

Having a rental car made it easy to get out and explore the rest of the area. We drove up to One Tree Hill (while listening to the U2 song!) for a view of the city on New Year's Day (another U2 song...). It was a blustery day, but sunny and lots of families were out enjoying the holiday. The tree is no longer on the hill, but there is a large obelisk monument to the Maoris there now. Next we headed out to Kohimarama Beach, a cute little neighborhood reminiscent of Alki.

J had spotted Brown's Island (also called Motukorea) on Google Earth a couple of years ago and really wanted to try to get out there. We inquired about it at the tourist info center ("I Site") in our hotel and came up empty. Apparently, it is part of the Hauraki Gulf Maritime Park and accessible only by private boat. It looks like you can easily get there by kayak, but we couldn't find any kayak rental shops nearby that were open on the holiday. So we had to settle for looking across at the island from Musick Point Reserve, a gorgeous spot on a peninsula east of downtown Auckland. Motukorea looks amazingly similar to Spieden Island close to home. Unfortunately, we got there just before the park closed and a guy actually came through to usher everyone out before closing the gates. We did meet a lovely couple the age of my parents who lived nearby and had the good fortune to walk out to the point together each evening.

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Photos

Could It Be Speiden??
It's really Motukorea, but the resemblance is uncanny!