This morning at day break we entered Auckland harbor and
docked at Queens Pier. We have sailed
7500 nautical miles since we left San Francisco three weeks ago to finally
reach New Zealand.
We left the ship at 7:45 a.m. and took the ferry to
Devonport. Devonport is a quaint little
suburb of Auckland and is one of the oldest settlements in New Zealand. We strolled along the streets and visited a
cafe that was full of people at 8 a.m., just staring at a television mounted on
the wall. There was a deafening silence
and as I looked around, I found myself
looking at the TV to see if there was some breaking news of a horrible
event. However, I found that New Zealand
was playing in a rugby championship and everyone seemed to be in a catatonic state. I’m not sure if it was because they were
losing or if it was just too early on a Saturday morning to get excited.
By mid-morning, we headed back across to Auckland by ferry
and walked down Queens Street, which is the main shopping area in
Auckland. We then visited the art
gallery and walked through a park in what appeared to be a bohemian section of
town. We then visited the harbor area
where there were many luxury yachts and sponsored sailboats for the Americas
Cup. As we walked around the harbor area,
we came across a family enjoying an ice cream.
They weren’t posing, but I couldn’t help but stop and take a picture of
them.
The Sky Tower is probably Auckland’s most familiar
landmark. It stands 1072 feet high and
has two observation decks and a revolving restaurant. There is a glass-floored observation deck and
I understand that bungy jumping is available if you dare.
After spending so much time at sea, we were ready to walk on
land, but found ourselves swaying a little bit when we were standing still. But we did walk…..a lot! My
fitbit showed that we had walked over 28,000 steps! The
weather has cooled off dramatically. The
high today in Auckland was probably 60 degrees.
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