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Published: February 11th 2007
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Emperor Penguins
At Kelly Tarton's Underwater world Dragged myself out of bed early this morning and indulged in a pretty expensive buffet breakfast, which is all good because at this stage we have no idea where to go for a good breakfast.
We set out on foot from the hotel heading towards Queen Street and the docks, saw a guy get clipped by a car right in front of us which was a bit of a wake up call.
It seemed to take forever to cross at the lights as the traffic from East to West goes through, followed by that from North to South then all the pedestrians go at once, I still havent decided whether this is a good idea or not.
We are taking the hop on hop off explorer bus this morning to visit some of the major attractions around the city, the first of which is Kelly Tartons Antarctic Encounter which is opposite the harbour and has a heap of Emperor Penguins which I have never seen in the flesh before and some leg hugging stingrays. The problem with these kinds of places is that they are always swarming with screaming kids so we were happy to escape the place
Lunch is served
Not a real whale and get on the next bus that came by.
The bus took us through Ponsonby which is a rich older suburb, where we checked out the Anglican Cathedral before getting off and swapping buses at the Auckland Museum to visit the Zoo. Our first stop was the Kiwi House of course, the Kiwi is nocturnal so it can be a little difficult to see them and almost impossible to photograph, although I did try. Again to many kids screaming and frightening the poor bloody animals, the Zoo is impressive, the exhibits and habitats are first rate and we both enjoyed it immensely.
The next stop was the Victoria Market which was just another market, but next door was a nice pub called the Drake Hotel so we wandered in for an ale before going on a mini pub crawl around the city familiarising ourselves with supermarkets and food places.
I was saying earlier that this city reminds me of Hong Kong and Hobart well it also has a distinctive Melbourne feel to it with a huge number of great pubs and eateries. We found ourselves in Aucklands "Kings Cross" on K road munching on kebabs after a
Auckland the fair
Truely a beautiful city huge slog up a very big hill as the sun began setting over the city.
The next morning was another early start as we were heading to the Auckland Museum which was seriously impressive as it is both a normal museum and a military museum as well. What interested me probably the most here was the "stuffed moa" (actually made from emu feathers) its a real shame the Maori ate them all.
We wandered this museum for 2 and half hours or so I really enjoyed the military and the maori exhibits. By 1pm we were back on the bus heading for the ferry wharf and the ferry to Devonport, bit of a waste of time as there was little of interest over there for us, not even any interesting pubs, so by 3 we were back in the city proper before settling in for a feed at a Mexican joint across the road from Sky tower.
We sat and watched people screaming as they fell from the top while we filled our stomachs, I think it helped my digestion, a few more pints on the way back to the hotel certainly did. Had another spa before
packing up for our departure tomorrow.
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