Auckland / NZ

In the early morning of January 29th, 2019, we arrived in New Zealand, one of our favorite destinations worldwide. However, this time, we unfortunately were visiting there only for one day and that was in Auckland, NZ`s largest city with a population of 1.4 million.

Sailing in to Auckland Harbour always is beautiful (and similar to the sailing in to Sydney Harbour (you`ll see…)), when the ship sails between the volcano on Rangitoto Island and the small town of Devenport on the other side, then comes around another small volcano (of Devenport) and you have a distant view of the Auckland skyline. Fortunately, we docked right downtown, at Queens Wharf, from where one has the best and easy access to the city. Since we had done the most interesting tours & city sightseeings on previous visits there, we decided to go for a walk thru the Harbour and Wharfs at Wynyard Quarter, where we enjoyed seeing many very nice sailboats and amazing yachts (there are listed approx. 70.000 boats!). No wonder why Auckland is called the “City of Sails“! After about two hours, when it became too hot, we returned to the ship for a snack at lunch time, before I headed out for another walk downtown.

When I stood in front of the 328-m (1.076 ft)-tall Sky Tower, I decided to get up there and enjoy the 360°-views over the city and its beautiful surroundings. From up there you can spot the many (some fifty) volcanoes that formed that area, and looking at the signs -where it said how many kilometers it is to various places around the globe (f.i. being away from Berlin=17.736 kms, or 5.918 kms to the South Pole, etc.)- was interesting. A few courageous people ventured to make use of the “sky jump“ from an altitude of 194 m (636 ft) - I become dizzy when only looking at that!

Strolled back thru the busy streets of downtown, seeing nice architecture with old and modern buildings and browsed some shops here & there before returning to the ship. When night turned in, we enjoyed the city lights as well as the illuminated Sky Tower and the Auckland Harbour Bridge with its changing colors (my pictures did not turn our well on that), before we took off again at 11 p.m..