Auckland

Auckland is probably much more impressive and interesting as the "first" place to visit in New Zealand than it is as the "last" place.  It's the only "big city" in the country, and as such has traffic lights in most of the places we've been rather than roundabouts.  We had traffic challenges on Wednesday and Thursday, but are proud to say we followed directions without any mistakes today and even went across the famous Harbour Bridge (twice).  It would be easier if streets didn't change names, and if streets remained either 2-way or 1-way without changing in the middle of downtown.

The city sits between 2 harbours, and the water has looked beautiful.  We saw it from "Sky Tower" which is 328 meters tall (the locals round that up to 1000 feet).  We also saw it from a hop on hop off bus tour, and took some pictures near the aquarium.  Tomorrow morning we're going on a Harbour Boat Tour which we're looking forward to.

Incidentally, this aquarium, Kelly Tarlton's, was far superior to the one in Napier, though doesn't compare to some of the really impressive ones we've seen....but it does get style points for being built in a former sewer along the waterfront.  The zoo was a fine zoo, and Jeff enjoyed taking pictures of most of the animals, though the kiwi once again were shy so our overpriced kiwi museum on the South Island was the only one of at least 3 opportunities where we actually saw them. The zoo gets style points for having glow worms which aren't worms at all but rather are insects.

Last night I finally ate rack of lamb.  We'd had lots of lamb -- lamburgers, roast lamb, hangi lamb, lamb rump, and probably others -- but all had been more well done than the exquisite medium rare of the tasty rack.  I should mention that I've also eaten venison (red deer were the 3rd most common farm animals on the south island after sheep and cows).  Tonight we repeated our Helsinki experience and returned to the Japanese restaurant on our last night.

Tomorrow, Saturday, will be a long day.  We will get up, check out of the hotel, go on our harbour cruise, explore (which probably means cache) for a bit, and get to the airport in plenty of time for our 7:30pm flight.  We will then arrive in San Francisco at 10:45am on Saturday (yes, Saturday)....it's not often that the arrival time of a flight precedes the departure time.