Meanwhile back in Auckland

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Auckland is a large busy city. They have finally decided to put an underground metro in so there are road works all over the place which are going to take several years to complete. It has a large Asian community as well as Maori so there are lots of take away cafes catering for these people. For the first time we also saw several homeless on the streets. However down on the Marina , once you have negotiated the road works there are some great restaurants. We had tried Oyster & Chop so the next night went to Soul and had great oysters and crab linguini. On our last day we decided to go up the Sky Tower. It costs about 20$ each just to go to the viewing platform. A far better deal is to have lunch in the revolving restaurant above. It takes an hour to do the full revolution so you get to see the whole of Auckland while sitting on the edge and having a delightful meal. I also had to go to a hairdresser and business is such that I was able to just walk in and get done. They are starting to feel the pinch of the coronavirus despite having no restrictions in place. Our hotel is practically empty and on our last evening we thought we would call in the bar for a nightcap only to find that it was closed. Our final dinner was back on the Marina at Portofino which is a very nice Italian. The waiters say they have noticed a marked decline in the number of visitors as on a Friday night the place would be packed. We could walk in without a booking and sit at a nice table. We have also noted that our ship the Silver Muse is back in the harbour. Perhaps it has no where else to go as everywhere has closed their borders. We are very fortunate that we were able to have our holiday before the chaos really erupted. We don't fancy the isolation we are going to have to do back home. Fortunately we have been in a low risk area the whole time and both have been well. Back to Blighty tomorrow via Singapore

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