Auckland

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We've spent the last few days of our time in New Zealand in the largest city and home to most of the population - Auckland.
Recommended to us by Lulu was the Domain museum. It's set in a large park, where we happened to see some people filming what could only have been Power Rangers! The museum was interesting and had some nice Pacific Island artefacts including quite a lot of Papua New Guinean stuff which was cool to look at. We particularly liked the spear edged with sharks teeth. After visiting the musuem we dropped our van off and walked into the city centre to our hostel. We've got a nice double room with a shared bathroom for 25 quid a night which is pretty good.

Yesterday (Friday 9th) we went to a market in the morning, had a bit of a look around Queen Street, the main shopping road, and did a few chores. In the evening we went to the Sky Tower. At 328m high it is the largest man made structure in the Soutern hemisphere and is 4m higher than the Eiffel Tower. The lift goes at 40kmph and is a pretty cool ride, with glass panels in the floor of the lift and in the side of the building to freak you out slightly before you reach the observation deck. We had good views out across the city. We could see our hostel, the harbour, Rangitoto and One Tree Hill, to name just a few things.
We decided to put our bad high tower experiences behind us and ate at the seafood buffet restaurant 2 floors above the main observation deck. We had a really nice dinner of quite fancy seafood and looked out across Auckland as the sun set and all the lights came on.

We didn't jump off the Sky Tower, unlike some unhinged people, although as you can imagine, Chris was tempted!

Today we checked out the slightly more alternative end of town, went to Albert park to eat our lunch and then on another of Lulu's suggestions, went for a drink at The Hog at the Viaduct Harbour. We are going to take a ferry across to Devonport this evening, to have dinner and find one of the rock pubs that we've been told exist over there!

Tommorow evening we fly to LA. We get there in the morning before we leave, which is all a bit worrying really. We're not sure if we'll be a day older or not and might have to move our birthdays. We'll let you know.