Domain Lodge Auckland

... parents for brunch and I got to hold the new twins that are nearly 2 months old and only weight 5 lbs. They are so tiny but so cute! It was a lovely day in auckland so bex showed me around One Tree HIll park ( sheep in the middle of a park that is in the middle of the city, odd) and Mission Bay, that is where I want to live, right on the beautiful water, cute parks and lovely homes. After I looked up the real estate there, i decided it was a ...

... that there was an Australia sporting team with us on the flight. They were heading to Raro to represent Australia in mixed (?) netball. For those of you who have played mixed netball I have a question. Were there quite a lot of gay guys playing? If not, then some of those young (and quite good looking) guys were doing very good jobs of imitating them. One of the chaperones put Julian Cleary to shame. But I digress…

We made it to Auckland in the "wee" hours. I'm not sure why the Kiwis have adopted this term, I guess the Scottish influence there!

We are staying in an apartment in the Central Business District (CBD) which is very nice. We are on the top floor which is good. Neither of us like heights so we ventureed out on the balcony on the first day, shuffling along with our backs to the wall and haven't been out there since!

The weather has been mainly wet (no ...

... Events Centre and ASB Showgrounds are within walking distance, while Eden Park, the Vector.The James Cook Hotel Grand Chancellor is well renowed for it's fantastic facilities, outstanding service and great location. Situated in the heart of Wellington city, the hotel offers a range of facilities suitable.

A warm welcome that's worth checking into! Superbly located in the south end of the central business district, Ventura Inn & Suites Hamilton is only ...

Then back to Auckland to catch my flight to Tonga.

Spending not even a week in NZ is definitely not enough but as it was Winter the timing was not so bad.
I was glad to see quite a lot of the North Island and its inhabitants in this short time.
Kiwis are overall super friendly, welcoming, curious about other cultures and ...

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... tonic and a bottle of red wine "just to go with the meal". As if we can disguise our absolute craving for the hard stuff with a feigned effort of culinary etiquette. Why do we always then fear being thought of by everyone around us and the hostess as well as dependent on the stuff when we ask for another wine instead of the coffee on offer. And of course another post dinner glass is essential in the same way ...

... they wave us over to join them. The rest of the night consists of drinking cheap wine and chatting about the next step in the travels and what they have done so far. It's definitely wired meeting people at this stage of the trip as I clearly remember meeting people who were finishing up when we started out,. Thinking how much time we had and what we were going to do. Now it's drawing to a close and it's genuinely sad. We chat til well past sunset and get royally eaten by the vicious NZ mosquitoes and head to bed.

Boy this was an exhausting day... We went to the Auckland Zoo for something unusual. They do behind the scenes tours where you can get up close and personal with the various animals. We had booked a ZOOM tour (as it is called) to get cuddly with the resident Galapagos Tortoises... Why Galapagos Tortoises you ask? We don't really know, but when looked through the list of available tours, we both (seperate from each other) picked that particular tour as our favourite... We guess ...

... Zealand. We went on a ride in a boat called the "Puke" (Poo-Kay). It is a 130 year old steamboat that was used to gather logs. Then we looked around the Museum a little bit. Then we went for a ride on the "Ted Ashby", an old scow (flat bottom boat),that was used to deliver goods along New Zealand's coastline. Then we finished up the museum.  I really enjoyed Auckland. It is so nice to be able to speak the language. It is about +25 degrees here during the day. - Rigel