bruary 23 - Auckland, New Zealand
Day 2 in Auckland. We had a tour that started about 9:00 am so no visit to the fitness center for me (any excuse will do.) We were a small group (arranged by Virtuoso Voyages, a perk from our travel agent) of about 20 on a big, comfortable bus. We toured around the affluent neighborhoods of Auckland with houses in the millions of dollars range, and made stops at the lovely rose garden public park and Bastion Point for views of Auckland. Must say, some of the affluent homes are very odd architecturally. There were all sorts of styles from very old to very modern and they didn't all work together. Next we returned to the War Memorial Museum, the scene of our dinner last night. We were given a private tour in smaller groups which was very nice. As with almost all museums, the accoustics are terrible with all of the echoing so being a small group was a necessity. It is a lovely museum and we could easily have spent a day there. But we got to see the highlights and learn a bit about NZ's military history as well as its cultural history. Then it was off to the Harbourside Ocean Bar Grill for a wonderful 3 course lunch - seafood chowder, red snapper and lemon pavlova. Had 2 pieces of the bread so no bread for me tonight. We ate with a 2 couples from Canada that we had not met before and had a very good time.
On the way back we passed Holy Trinity Cathedral which consists of 3 buldings. The original beautiful wooden structure, the newer brick building and the even newer addition which doesn't include brick due to earthquake concerns. I couldn't get a picture of the original wooden church from the bus, but you can see the more modern building with the two types of construction in the same building. Interesting.
It was only Tom and Jan with us for trivia so we didn't do very well with 10/15. We blame Tom because he came up with Santana after we had already traded papers for grading.
Since it was Jan's birthday, we had a delicious dinner at Chartreuse and they provided the birthday cake. After dinner we stopped for an after dinner beverage at the Mariner Lounge where we ran into Steve and Leona so we shared our adventures of the day. No show for us tonight and tomorrow we have a very early 6:50 am meet time for our tour. Yikes.
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| Michael Joseph Savage Memorial Park |
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| Stained glass ceiling at Museum |
On the way back we passed Holy Trinity Cathedral which consists of 3 buldings. The original beautiful wooden structure, the newer brick building and the even newer addition which doesn't include brick due to earthquake concerns. I couldn't get a picture of the original wooden church from the bus, but you can see the more modern building with the two types of construction in the same building. Interesting.
It was only Tom and Jan with us for trivia so we didn't do very well with 10/15. We blame Tom because he came up with Santana after we had already traded papers for grading.
Since it was Jan's birthday, we had a delicious dinner at Chartreuse and they provided the birthday cake. After dinner we stopped for an after dinner beverage at the Mariner Lounge where we ran into Steve and Leona so we shared our adventures of the day. No show for us tonight and tomorrow we have a very early 6:50 am meet time for our tour. Yikes.
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