A day trip round Auckland

Today we got up at half 8 and sorted ourselves out as we had just dumped our stuff last night to avoid waking people up. We left the hostel at around half 9 and headed down to the harbour area. At 10am we went on a free walking tour of Auckland, that lasted three hours. As walking tours go, the one of Auckland wasn't as good, in terms of we didn't see as many amazing/interesting things, however this might be because there just isn't as many in the city.

During the tour we saw one building, the Britomart, that the guide told us was the oldest building in Auckland. It was 100 years old. All the buildings are relatively modern apparently and the architecture shows it. However later after the tour Lauren and I walked past a building that was opened 105 years ago so we don't really know if the tour guide was accurate in his descriptions.

We did learn quite a bit on the tour about the Maori people and their culture and Craig,  the guide, told us how they came to be in New Zealand. Apparently they arrived by boat, navigating using the stars, that are now represented on the New Zealand flag.  Craig seemed quite interested in Maori culture; he told us he was 1/32 Maori.

Other places we saw on the tour included the sky tower, which is quite hard to miss anyway as the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, and Fort Lane, the former red light district. Some of the former brothels now house cafes. Apparently a lot of older buildings now have cafes in and people make jokes about how you can tell which building are older because they have cafes in them.

Another place the tour stopped at was the Albert Gardens which were pretty nice. They were named after Queen Victoria's Albert. Apparently underneath the park there are tunnels that the Americans packed with left over gunpowder after the end of world war 2 and then bricked up, meaning something horrendous could happen at any point. The tour also went to look at a memorial to a church reverend.  The memorial was sort of encased by tree branches which was pretty cool, but the most interesting thing about the memorial was the spelling mistake, that had attempted to be corrected on the plaque. A letter was missing and the person making the sign had just done an arrow and added the letter above.  

Whilst on the tour we learnt some pretty interesting facts about New Zealand and Auckland, such as Auckland is the 4th most expensive city to live in. The average house price is 1 million dollars. Also, Craig told us that New Zealand has more coast line than the USA and that it was the first country to give women the vote.  Apparently the women's movement tricked the more conservative figures in society into believing they would vote for an alcohol restriction or ban that was being tabled if they were able to vote, so they were give the vote, only to not back the booze ban. 

The tour finished around 1pm and afterwards we wandered around the seafront area. We went to the end of Princes Wharf, which allowed us a nice view of the sparkling sea and the surrounding areas. We also could see Auckland Harbour Bridge,  which has nothing on Sydney.

We wandered round the city until arond 5pm, before treating ourselves to Nandos for dinner. We then headed back to the hostel, showered and packed, as we have an early bus tomorrow to the Bay of Islands.

Our time in Auckland has only been short. It would have been nice to visit the surrounding islands and go up the sky tower had we had the time and money. We will be back for an afternoon later on in the week and we plan to visit Mission Bay with a little help from a friend.