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Published: October 31st 2022
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When we awoke this morning and looked out our window, it was as if we were looking at another ship. It was the Auckland Hilton, built on the pier in Auckland Harbour and built to look like a ship. It is actually above the international passenger terminal.
We went up to the cafe for brekky and discovered that overnight the ship had been decorated for Halloween 👻 🎃 After breakfast we went ashore and walked up the hill to the Auckland Sky Tower. I took some lovely pics, but once again my phone has stopped talking to my iPad - I’ll see if I can transfer them today. We went up to the main observation deck, then up to an even higher one, which had cleaner, clearer glass, and then back down to the deck with the cafe on it, for a lovely coffee. According to the signs, you could look for the 50 volcanoes in the Auckland area.
After we’d finished in the sky tower we returned to earth and walked around the streets of Auckland, stopping to explore St Patrick’s Cathedral, before returning to the quay area to meet up with our Kiwi Tuk Tuk Tours guide ….
who never turned up. We booked and paid for this online before we left home. Half an hour after our tour was to start we returned to the ship and went up to the cafe for lunch. As our ship pulled away from the quay I emailed the tuk tuk man who immediately responded, saying his gearbox had blown up and of course, he would refund our money.
At lunch we spoke with some lovely people from Essex who are doing this cruise and the next one (to the Great Barrier Reef) back to back. They don’t have to change state rooms in between cruises, as the lovely people from Phoenix had to, but they do have to exit the ship when we arrive in Sydney - that’s going to be awful getting all of the thousands of passengers off the ship.
We thought we’d have a pre-dinner drink but for some reason only two bars on the ship were open, so we went up to the Sky Bar on 14 to find that everyone was being evicted in preparation for a private function, and we had to go to the ensemble bar down on 5 where we both had
a French 75 before proceeding to dinner. Dinner was very quiet tonight as the lovely couple from Phoenix had disembarked this morning in Auckland. Dinner was interesting - I had a Seafood bisque, while Tom had a Caesar Salad, followed by a crab encrusted fillet of flounder for me, and a New York steak for Tom - we both had lemon meringue for dessert. There is still no Shiraz on the ship (no restocking) so we are making do with pinot noir, but the 19 Crimes Pinot Noir we had last night has run out too, so we’re having to drink the Californian Pinot Noir.
We are having a nice enough time, but we would not intentionally return to Celebrity (owned by Royal Caribbean) - there are many little things that don’t sit right for us.
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