Thursday 10th March - Auckland

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Up a bit later today - around 09:00 - I don't feel like I have really come to terms with the last time change!
Today the itinerary say that we will tour the Auckland City Centre.

We have breakfast and set out for Devonport, which is located at the North Shore. We parked up the car and just made a ferry leaving for Auckland Harbour, the journey takes around 20 mins and on the way there are great views of the Auckland skyline.We got off the ferry and made our way along Queen Street. Auckland has all the hustle and bustle of a major city, Sydney on a smaller scale. We are making our way to the Sky Tower, the tower is 328m high and is the highest structure in the southern hemisphere. The lift takes just 40seconds to take us to the observation deck, from here there is a great 360 degree view of the city. The are parts of the floor that are glass and you can see right down to street level- Di finds it very difficult to walk on this glass floor. There is also Sky Jumping taking place, which is a base wire jump from the observation deck that takes 16 seconds and you travel at 75km/h.

From the Sky Tower we made our way to Viaduct Harbour which is lined with cafes and restaurants. We stopped off in an Irish Pub to take on some refreshment. We then made another dash to catch the 14:00 return ferry to Davenport.

We had decided to eat lunch at Devonport, and find a restaurant on Victoria Street called Manuka. We have a good lunch, I overindulge by having pud- a huge piece of Carrot Cake!!. We then made our way back to Browns Bay via Takapuna and Milford Beach, which is lovely wee place with a marina.

In the evening we went to the local pub, the Speakers Corner for dinner. We met Gary and Tracey's family, Lorna with partner Ben, and Rebecca with partner Chris. The majority of us had fish and chips, and Di and I had mushy peas with ours!!. We have another beer and chat, then make our way home.

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