Our first stop in New Zealand is Auckland. It's the country's biggest city (although not the capital), but it's not huge in population terms compared to a British city (1.4 million I think). It's really spread out though, mostly miles and miles of incredibly clean, very green suburbia. The city centre isn't really up to much but there's some pretty nice bits to it, especially the coastline. We've done a bit of a mix of boring admin-type things like open bank accounts and touristy things, like visit Underwater World and laugh at the fish and huge penguins. We've sat on the beach and met a friend of mine that I stayed with last time I was in New Zealand - ten years ago. We've got excited about the fantastic food and lovely, cheap wine. I've attempted to do some shopping, but Ben's minuscule capacity for shopping tolerance has meant it hasn't been particularly successful! We've wandered around the city, and it's parks, and I've even been persuaded to visit the city's museum. The highlight of our time in Auckland is definitely when we had lunch in a restaurant over-looking the harbour. There was a telescope and binoculars to watch all the sailing boats zipping around. After talking to some of the locals we discovered we were watching the Louis Vuitton Sailing Championships (actually it's probably not called that but it's something like that). We saw the China versus America leg and one of the sails of China's yacht completely riped in half (unfortunately Ben missed it because as-per-usual he was in the toilet!)
Monday 2 February 2009
New Zealand - Auckland
So a thirteen hour flight brought us to a new country, a new continent and a new day (I still can't get my head around the whole date line suddenly-it's-another-day thing. Some how it went from being January 28th to being January 30th. But my Mum's birthday is on the 29th, so it didn't exist for us!). The jet lag has been the hardest thing to adjust to. I keep waking up really early, but in the spirit of the healthy, sport-crazy Kiwis I've been getting up and going for a run.
Our first stop in New Zealand is Auckland. It's the country's biggest city (although not the capital), but it's not huge in population terms compared to a British city (1.4 million I think). It's really spread out though, mostly miles and miles of incredibly clean, very green suburbia. The city centre isn't really up to much but there's some pretty nice bits to it, especially the coastline. We've done a bit of a mix of boring admin-type things like open bank accounts and touristy things, like visit Underwater World and laugh at the fish and huge penguins. We've sat on the beach and met a friend of mine that I stayed with last time I was in New Zealand - ten years ago. We've got excited about the fantastic food and lovely, cheap wine. I've attempted to do some shopping, but Ben's minuscule capacity for shopping tolerance has meant it hasn't been particularly successful! We've wandered around the city, and it's parks, and I've even been persuaded to visit the city's museum. The highlight of our time in Auckland is definitely when we had lunch in a restaurant over-looking the harbour. There was a telescope and binoculars to watch all the sailing boats zipping around. After talking to some of the locals we discovered we were watching the Louis Vuitton Sailing Championships (actually it's probably not called that but it's something like that). We saw the China versus America leg and one of the sails of China's yacht completely riped in half (unfortunately Ben missed it because as-per-usual he was in the toilet!)
Our first stop in New Zealand is Auckland. It's the country's biggest city (although not the capital), but it's not huge in population terms compared to a British city (1.4 million I think). It's really spread out though, mostly miles and miles of incredibly clean, very green suburbia. The city centre isn't really up to much but there's some pretty nice bits to it, especially the coastline. We've done a bit of a mix of boring admin-type things like open bank accounts and touristy things, like visit Underwater World and laugh at the fish and huge penguins. We've sat on the beach and met a friend of mine that I stayed with last time I was in New Zealand - ten years ago. We've got excited about the fantastic food and lovely, cheap wine. I've attempted to do some shopping, but Ben's minuscule capacity for shopping tolerance has meant it hasn't been particularly successful! We've wandered around the city, and it's parks, and I've even been persuaded to visit the city's museum. The highlight of our time in Auckland is definitely when we had lunch in a restaurant over-looking the harbour. There was a telescope and binoculars to watch all the sailing boats zipping around. After talking to some of the locals we discovered we were watching the Louis Vuitton Sailing Championships (actually it's probably not called that but it's something like that). We saw the China versus America leg and one of the sails of China's yacht completely riped in half (unfortunately Ben missed it because as-per-usual he was in the toilet!)
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