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Published: October 24th 2012
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We are only staying in New Zealand for 3 weeks and have been quickly realising how much there is to do. We have a date with Sarah in Queenstown on the 26th for the weekend, so time in the North Island is short. We have eventually decided to fly from Auckland to Queenstown and plan to just see a very small amount of the North Island but without rushing for once. This started with 3 nights in Auckland.
After our very nice flight and an easy journey into the city on the bus we checked into our hostel. We had picked a pretty small hostel, and although its very quiet, we really liked it, and its central location. Also the fact that we could afford a double room, turns out NZ is much more reasonable than Aus. Auckland is 3 hours ahead of Brisbane, so really only had time for a quick walk around for orientating ourselves before it got dark. Our plan for the evening was to walk around and find a reasonably priced restaurant nearby, but when we started walking we found them all to be expensive, empty or bars. Eventually we found a nice Indian for some
food. Then we walked back via a few bars. Turns out this is the gay area of Auckland. Made mostly obvious by the huge Mauri Transvestites! But everywhere was busy and a good laugh and before we knew it, 3am had arrived!
You may have guessed that we missed the next morning completely. When we did surface we got some food and then went out to explore the city. It turned out that this weekend was the ITU world triathalon championships and the womens event was on that Saturday afternoon. This meant that most of the roads were closed, making it a bit difficult even to walk around. However the weather was quite nice and we got to stand and watch some of the cycling and even bagged ourselves some free tickets to the grandstand to watch the end of the running and the medal ceremony. The rest of the day was spent wandering around the sights, taking in the needle shaped sky tower, the docklands and Albert park. We then headed to Auckland Art Gallery for a bit of culture and discovered....we don't get art, no suprise there! We stayed in and cooked ourselves tea, watched a film
and caught up our sleep!
When we woke up the next day it was raining, lots and lots! We had bought tickets for the grandstand to watch the mens triathalon event, featuring Jonny Brownlee, so we got wrapped up and went out! We had a great time cheering Jonny on to second place. But wow we got wet, it rained and rained and we sat and watched under an umbrella, with our waterproofs on, sitting on bags and tea towels! Finally it cleared up in time for the race finish. It was also the final one of the series, and Jonny Brownlee won the overall championships so we saw the medal ceremony (who needs the Olympics?!). It was really fun to watch, especially the exciting change overs and sprint finish, and something different to see from another city. After going for a coffee to warm up and dry out, we went to do a bit of shopping, deciding it was time to invest in some jeans if this was going to be the weather here! Unfortunately, by the time we finished shopping the rain was back. After heading home for a much needed shower and change, it stopped raining
again. We went out to the harbour front for some tea. Despite it being a bank holiday Sunday, everywhere was pretty quiet. However we found a nice italian restaurant and had a beautiful meal. Unfortunately we have found a problem with our new found wine knowledge, when we ask a question about the wine, we end up in a tasting and being sold more expensive wine than initially planned, seems we need to play dumb to get away with the second cheapest wine ploy!
We have found Auckland to be a nice friendly city and enjoyed the time we spent so far, despite being some what limited by the weather, the good news for us is that we are coming back in a few days, as we had a few walks we wanted to try around the city. Tomorrow we pick up our hire car and head further North, but we are back in 3 days.
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