A whopping 33% of the New Zealand’s population, or 1 in 3 people, live in Greater Auckland. In fact, more people live in Auckland than the entire South Island (the largest island of New Zealand). I will say, though, that as much as people like to comment on Auckland being congested and overly chaotic (or at least that’s how it seemed people spoke of it everywhere else we went in New Zealand), we found Auckland to be quite manageable for a big city. It was clean, organized, and beautiful. Even the people were beautiful. Three of us separately commented on how it seemed like all the locals were practically models with how naturally beautiful they were. Perhaps related to this is that Auckland has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world (people I personally find to be quite striking in their good looks).

Of course, not everybody would agree with us about Auckland being such a great place. In fact, Aucklanders are often referred to as “Jafas” elsewhere – “Just Another F*@$#ing Aucklander” – usually when talking about how they are moving to their cute little towns to escape Auckland’s high prices and traffic. Again, though, we found Auckland and the people to be quite welcoming. Matthew even said it would be a city he could / would live in. Us too!

Something that you can’t help but see when in Auckland is the Sky Tower. At 1076 ft, it is the tallest structure in the southern half of the world. It is part of SkyCity, Auckland’s only casino. We didn’t go to the top for the view, but Dean and Carol did and said it was spectacular. Also, apparently you can jump from the tower similar to bungee jumping – something one of our elderly cruise shipmates did a few years ago. Matthew was the only one of us who would even consider doing it.

While walking around, we stumbled upon The Shakespeare, a restaurant/hotel/brewery that has been around since 1898 and was one of the very first microbreweries in New Zealand. We swung in for a pint and a couple games of pool while the boys enjoyed some Wi-Fi for downloading songs to Spotify playlists.

After our rest stop, we continued on, mostly just wandering around until we headed back to the ship. Between our Superbowl fun, the Wētā Workshop Unleashed, and our meandering around we considered Auckland a success and a place we would definitely want to return to in the future.

To round out this post, I’ll end with two final things. First, when we did the Wētā Workshop Unleashed we also swung into the floor below where there was a special exhibit on the All Blacks experience (New Zealand’s famous rugby team). We didn’t go through the whole thing, but here’s a quick “Where’s Waldo” picture of me, Ryan, and Matthew. We kinda blend. 🙂

And finally, here’s a lovely shot of the skyline we captured from our ship. Such a stunning place!