Auckland, New Zealand  (Itinerary)

   
We were flying the NZ flag with the Union Jack in the canton with stars in the shape of the Southern Cross constellation. With a beautiful sunrise and a full moon setting on either side of the ship, it was hard to know which way to look.

Paddle boarders were waiting for our ship way out in the channel to ride our wake.

The skyline with its Sky City needle came into view.

This head of land protects the harbor.

As we get closer, the containers and their cranes become part of the skyline.

 
This car transport ship had apparently just deposited a bunch of cars.

The ship's reflection, as we pass by the glass-faced buildings, is mesmerizing.

 
The old ferry terminal next to the dock serves as a contrast to the modern buildings around it. Our welcome on the ramp to the terminal...

 
Our first stop when we got off the ship was the information counter at the transportation hub, the Britomart. The woman Dean talked to was quite helpful and gave the highlights of how to navigate the city including directions to the botanical garden.

 
We walked into a Jewish cemetery when we got off the bus. A few of the older headstones have been repaired and many are decorated with a heavy coating of lichens and mosses. Some had been defaced with swastikas. Sad. 

 
A sculpture in the cemetery

A hillside street...

3 stone dogs sit in front of a college.

We enjoyed this wooden sculpture in a park in the center of town.

   
"Stop your sniveling creek bed; come rain hail & floodwater laugh again"

 
This statue of a former mayor stands in the same square with the previous sculpture. Behind Dean, a small group of Asians were doing the Lotus Tai Chi that I'm learning on the ship. They were in the second phase where you hold your arms in a circle in 3 positions. In our class we were doing well to hold positions for 3 minutes, but these folks were holding for much longer than that. My Tai Chi instructor said that there is a 7 minute version.

 
I spotted the stone gateway sculpture from the bus, so we got off and walked up the road. Across the street southern magnolia trees were in bloom in front of the Wikitoria building. We walked into the park atop this hill—there are 46 old volcanoes in northern New Zealand, so this was probably one of them.

  
The trees were enormous. They looked like live oak trees. It seemed weird to have Florida natives planted here.

 
A tulip tree, another Florida native tree and a farmer's wind vane.

 
Queen Victoria overlooks the gardens. Cleomes dazzle in the sunlight.

 
A flower clock for Albert Park. All in all a lovely park/garden.

The first synagogue for the city.

  
A street performer playing a gold miner with a shovel and an oil lamp held his position until someone put money in his hat, and then he'd do a routine to get to the next position to hold.

  
We took the bus back to the port area. A tourist information center was constructed from containers with a large video screen in the end of the top container. 

  
We used our AT-HOP pass to take the train to go out toward the west.

 
Things were quite rural out there, but we also passed by Hell...  Pizza.

 
There were quite a few school boys on the trains. 

 
We struck up a conversation with this talkative boy.

A mural from the train...

 
We got off the train at the right stop to access the Auckland Botanic Gardens, but we were to catch a bus (the 466) for the last leg. We talked to this college student who knew the schedule. She was a student at the famous One Tree Hill College.

A chaste tree is spectacular with its blue spiky flower heads and the 100s of bees.

 
I loved the table setting in the herb garden.

 
A mosaic pool bottom and a bumble bee on an orange flower head.

 
An unusual black cultivar called "Swartzkop" and an elephant yucca species.

 
A beautiful cactus flower and... 
...another cactus flower on a prickly pear with a busy bee stirring up some pollen.

 
We had a great time in the Potter Children's Garden, which was named after a priest, not Beatrix or Harry. A human sundial shows that it's 4:30 even on a cloudy day. I stood on the tile for Feb. and it was not daylight savings time, which would have used the outer numbers.

 
Still in the children's garden, themes get a playful twist.

 
Pink yarrow.

Can you say Yellow!

A water feature with worms or snakes made of stone. 

 
A moray eel sculpture and a driftwood fish.

 
Some information on the uses of this plant, from baskets and mats to cloth.

 
We saw many ferns and tree ferns. We liked the wide arbor covering the road at the entrance to the garden.

 
We walked back to the town where we caught the train back to the ship. We probably could have walked to the gardens as well, but it was downhill going back and we knew approximately where the train station was. On the way we stopped to admire a Norfolk Island pine growing in a rotary.

 
We changed trains and talked to these cute kids at the station. This route back was near the water.

 
A picturesque scene from the train... And it was a short walk back from the train to the ship. 

The "cloud" structure next to our dock was lit up as we walked back to the ship. We'd covered some ground, but we'd saved some energy for our second day in this great city.

 
The next morning we stopped to take a photo of a Maori statue dressed in a a ceremonial robe. The bus station is just across the street from the dock. We were headed to the fish market. Things were pretty quiet because it was Waitangi Day, a national holiday celebrating the signing of the treaty between the aboriginal people and the Europeans. 

From the bus, a rainbow appeared after a shower.

 
Near the fish market, the whole dock area has been transformed into a people friendly space. The metal sculpture swings slightly in the breeze. The face of this building is covered with a metal mesh glows in the early light.

 
The first market was just a fish store, not the wild market like we saw in Manta.

 
We did like seeing the green-lipped mussels, though. 

And the many varieties of shrimp.

 
Another space made from containers.

 
These wooden lounges are on rails to allow for people to move them around.

 
We thought that the flags indicated the countries where this boat had sailed, but it's a restaurant. We liked the name of this boat, Next Adventure!

Another rainbow meant that a shower was headed our way.

 
A play on Key West and one of many secret gardens...

 
We stayed under an overpass to wait out the shower. Across from us was the Tepid Baths house, where the salt water used for coolant at the power factory was then directed into a pool. These heated pools were famous for their healing properties.

 
We walked along to Karangahape Road (affectionately known as K Road) after the rain.

 
We saw Mt. Eden from here—another of the 46 volcanoes.

 
We love the sense of humor on this barber shop door sign. A re-purposed church is now a cute cafe bar.

K-road Sutra...

 
The second photo shows that the boy on the right has a bird on a string at some distance down the wall.

We had no idea why fake ice or icing was dripping from the window sills.

 
An ornate building with an old southern magnolia tree in the yard.

 
While the magnolia is native to the US, the epiphytes (air plants) that grow on its bark are entirely different here. 
Next to the ornate Victorian house is one that's starkly modern.

   
We loved the eclectic collection of stuff at a shop called Flotsam & Jetsam. Then we crossed the street into a park that we could see from the ship that had looked enticing. It was Western Park.

 
The 4 top corners of a building were buried at odd angles into the ground. 
"Birds used to sit here and watch people far below."

   
The park sat on a hillside and we were as high at the observation deck on the spire. We walked down the hill.

 
A sculpture in a rotary that looked like a bunch of marshmallows on red sticks or maybe a large flower. We stopped at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

 
Across the street from the cathedral a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation" was painted on the wall.

 
Shakespeare's Tavern and a sculpture of a life-sized extinct moa, which was the world's tallest bird. The capacity of its egg was equivalent to 90 chicken eggs. It went extinct approximately 200 years ago.

A couple of training schooners were at the dock. One, the Robert C. Seamans, is from Woods Hole, MA. It was nice to see a ship with the US flag for a change.

We walked in the fish market area again, but this time it was filled with families enjoying the Saturday. The light was different, too.

 
One of the containers that had been closed earlier in the day is now open and surprisingly is a little free library. 

The water under the metal sculpture is a wading area. Lots of families were out celebrating the holiday.

 
It felt good to put up my feet!

 
We walked up thestairs to a pedestrian bridge over a highway and then another long staircase called Jacob's Ladder to a high bluff area. St. Mary's College, which is also an old folks home was up there.

 
I thought that this house looked sorta like an old Florida cracker house. A tiki looks over a skate park.

A cricket batting cage in yet another park.

 
And finally, a funny mural near the dock.

Next stop was north of Auckland in a place called Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Dean's Log: Auckland