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Published: October 23rd 2008
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We found out the best way to get into town from our campsite at Takapuna - we had to walk to another part of town, hop on a bus to the ferry port, then catch a ferry over to the city. In hindsight it would have been much better staying closer to the city but on the bright side at least we’re on the north of the city now so at least we can drive out easily from there.
When we finally arrived in town an hour later we decided to do some shopping. I had only brought one pair of trousers with me and when we’d had them washed at one of the resorts they’d broken the zip on the zip off legs somehow, meaning I now only had a pair of cropped trousers. In the warmth of the islands it hadn’t been a problem, but in NZ it was cold and I needed something warm to wear urgently! We traipsed around the shops for ages trying desperately to find some that would fit, but they don’t have petite ranges here and there weren’t really any large department stores either. Eventually I figured that jeans would be the answer
as they tend to come in different leg lengths, and we went into a store. A guy tried to sell me a pair of £150 jeans and Matt almost fainted. Eventually we found out that they don’t do any petite clothes in NZ and generally there are plenty of places that alter clothes so we found a place selling cheap jeans and took these to be shortened instead. As soon as we picked them up I put them on and suddenly relieved to feel warm at last.
We’d had a good walk around the city already while shopping, so we decided to have an early dinner before heading up the Sky Tower before the sun went down. We went to a place recommended by our guide book called Tony’s and as usual we ate until we were extremely full. We’ve really got to stop doing that!
It was still light enough to see the view when we went up the Sky Tower and we knew that going at this time gave us the best of both worlds; we’d get to see the view during daylight and then get to see the city lights when the sun was down.
The lift up was really strange - there was a big square of glass in the floor so that you could watch the lift shaft beneath you as you went up. Also part of the wall of the lift was glass so you could see outside. The whole journey only took 40 seconds as the lift travels so fast. You even feel your ears pop like when you’re on a plane.
The view out across the city was awesome. The viewing deck wall was all glass and in places on the floor at the edge there were glass strips that you could walk over and see the pavement way below. There was lots of information about the building of the tower on the walls. I can’t believe it only took two years to build. It’s even bigger than the Eiffel Tower and to get it straight they had to build foundations deep down, and use various centre points and plumb lines from other structures around including a volcano and another local sky scraper. The crane building it was struck by lightening twice but the driver escaped both times as they had an early warning system on board.
Dotted
along the deck was some large interactive cameras. You could guide them to view anything around the city and could even zoom into windows to see people sitting at their desks in office blocks. It went dark a bit too quick to play with these for too long though so we decided to head up to the very top deck. It was much smaller up there and a lot quieter as it cost a bit more to go all the way up. Taking pictures was almost impossible as you couldn’t keep the camera still enough to take the picture without it blurring.
By the time we’d finished we realised that Phil (an old school friend of Matt’s who currently lives in Auckland) should have just finished work around the corner so we met up with him for a coffee. It was strange that we haven’t seen him for years and yet now here we were meeting up with him in New Zealand. We arranged to meet up with him again the following afternoon and headed back to the ferry.
We were lucky that we left when we did as we caught one of the last boats of the
night back. Unfortunately for us though the bus didn’t match up with it so we had to wait for 45 mins in the freezing cold for it to come before we could get back to our van.
The novelty of making up the bed was already starting to wear off!
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