New Zealand - North Island - Auckland

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We arrived in Auckland at 6pm on Wednesday 1 August after our flight from Sydney. Philly (my friend Nick's girlfriend) picked us up and took us to her apartment where Nick greeted us with a beer and a dinner of soup followed by steak, sausage, chicken and salad. After setting up our beds in their living room (which had great views from the large windows and balcony), we drove into the city and walked around a bit before going to a bar for a beer. On Thursday, we woke up at 8.30am and it was nice to just hang around the house and use the internet. In the afternoon, we walked into the city and strolled around before getting some lunch. We then took a bus around some suburbs before returning to the city to meet Nick for 'After Work Drinks' at 5pm. A few bars, a few drinks and a few hours later, we ended up in the casino at 3am. On Friday morning we took advantage of having free broadband internet and watched lots of funny clips on YouTube while getting up to date with our laundry. We went to the local shop in Parnell to get some groceries and then returned home for lunch. I spent the rest of the afternoon selecting my fantasy football teams for the new season. At 5pm, we walked into the city to meet Nick for 'After Work Drinks' again. It was another long, alcohol fuelled night and I got home at 5.30am. We got up at 10am on Saturday and took a ferry to Ringatoto Island. With 3 hours to spend on the island, we walked to the summit of the volcano where we fed some little birds. On our descent, we chose to take a different track back to the wharf. At 2.45pm we reached a sign telling us that the wharf was 90 minutes away on the road track and 2 hours away on the coastal track. Given that we had to catch the last boat of the day at 4pm, we made the silly decision to take the 2 hour coastal track. We drastically underestimated the terrain and we had to pace walk/run for over an hour to board our ferry out of breath, dehydrated and sweating. Unfortunately, Ian noticed that he had lost his pendant so we changed our plans of leaving Auckland on Sunday so we could return to the island to search for the pendant. After departing the ferry, we took the bus to Parnell and got our takeaway dinner from Burger Fuel. After dinner we were so exhausted that we decided to stay in and watch Hostel on DVD. We woke up at 8am on Sunday and took the ferry back to Ringatoto Island where we spent 3 hours covering our tracks looking for Ian's pendant. Unsuccessful, we returned to the mainland on the afternoon ferry and had an Indian curry for lunch. Philly and Nick then picked us up and drove us to Davenport where we stopped for a beer. We then went to the North Shore where they were looking at a house they might buy. Our next stop was the Domain where we drove to the summit for 360 degree views of the city. After returning home, we chilled out for a while before going out in the evening to a Chinese restaurant. We all had an early night as we planned to wake up at 2am to watch the Chelsea Vs Man Utd game but we slept straight through and woke up at 7am to catch our tour bus to the Bay of Islands.

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