Today was our first full day in Auckland, New Zealand. We arrived yesterday morning and spent the day roaming the city shopping and getting our bearings.
Auckland is no different than any other large city (and as expected. It's globalization at its best). Today we did a tour to Wahiki Island. There are about 8,000 permanent residents on this beautiful island. Many of the residents commute to work via a 35 minute ferry ride. This definitely beats rush hour on the freeway! The ferry ride was beautiful and easy. When we arrived on the island, we jumped on our tour bus and sat back to enjoy the ride. The driver knew so much about the island and he was quite entertaining. The island was beautiful with rolling green hills. The houses were small and reminded me of a small cottage that you would see anywhere along the west coast in a little port town. The only difference was that on the north side of the island these houses start at $500,000 can be as much as $1 to $2 million. We stopped at a little restaurant on the beach for a break and to enjoy the breaktaking waterfront view.
The rest of the day we walked around the downtown area shopping and went site seeing. I called it an early evening while Carol met up with a young man that volunteered to be her companion and tour guide while I relaxed in the room. Our hotel, SkyCity is in a great location and is centrally located. The hotel has three casinos, 10 plus restaurants and several bars. The hotel has a huge structure that is reminiscent of the Space Needle in Seattle with a restaurant at the top and awesome views. Tomorrow we have a tour booked to go to the top and do the “sky walk”. participants get dressed in a orange suit and harnesess to walk the perimeter of the top circle deck. There is nothing on either side and just a grated structure beneath your feet. It is supposed to be a huge adrenaline rush along with promising views. Carol and I are both afraid of heights, so we’ll see how this goes tomorrow