A surprise weekend to watch the rugby
Trip Start
Aug 13, 2007
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61
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Trip End
Dec 31, 2008
Auckland,
North Island,
New Zealand
Sunday, June 15, 2008
We caught the train to Eden Park which was free to anyone who had a match ticket. A good idea! We were thankfully sitting in covered seats as part way through the match the heavens opened, although only for a short while. There were a whole range of food stalls within the grounds, a bit more variety than the usual burger and chips stalls you tend to get at football grounds in the UK. I had a caramel crepe, and a beer. Interesting combination, but at the time it seemed like a good idea.
The atmosphere at the game was electric, especially whilst the national anthems were being sung, and then afterwards when the All Blacks performed the Haka. It sent shivers down my spine, and I recommend going to see an All Blacks game, just for that alone.
As expected,after putting up a bit of a fight to start with, England were comprehensively beaten, but I didn't mind too much as I'd had a good night, and one of the players, Topsy, seems like he will be a good player for the future. I can't really comment on the game itself, as half the time I had no idea what was going on. Football is a lot easier to follow!
Afterwards we were going to catch the train back to the city, but there were massive queues to even get onto the platforms let alone the trains. Buses were parked right outside the train station as well, adding to the chaos. I have no idea what they are planning to do for the Rugby World Cup in 2011, as the traffic was chaos! We started walking instead, figuring it would take approx 1hr to get back to the city, but after we got away from the vicinity of Eden Park the traffic was flowing freely and we managed to get on a bus and get a ride into the city instead.
We went to Sky City, and the Atrium Bar, to watch a band that was on there and to have some cocktails as well. It was pretty busy, but we think we managed to get back to the city centre before the majority of the spectators at the rugby.
On Sunday morning, we got up fairly early and after checking out and leaving our bags at the hotel, we walked down to the city centre and had a cooked breakfast. We then caught the bus to Auckland Zoo. As you may have guessed, I like visiting zoos! Graham wasn't overly fussed but one of the advantages of planning a surprise weekend away is that you get to choose the itinerary! The weather wasn't looking too clever, as whilst we were walking from the bus to the zoo, and for the first hour or so there were a couple of light drizzle showers, but it sooned cleared up.
Auckland zoo is bigger and better than Wellington Zoo, and has some really nice enclosures. The highlight of the day was getting to feed a giraffe, and we watched a pukeko and her chick wandering about. I love the colouring of the pukeko. We also saw two kids fascinated by a hen and some chickens wandering along the path. Another treat we had that day was to feed some lorikeets, although for some reason they were being quite shy and didn't come down from the trees that often, so we had to be very patient!
After the zoo, we went back to the city centre and grabbed some lunch, and our bags from the hotel before catching the airbus to the airport. We had a couple of hours or so before our flight, but auckland domestic terminal has quite a few shops compared with other domestic airports so we entertained ourselves for a while before boarding our plane to take us back to Wellington.
