Day 26 - January 29, 2025 - Wednesday - Auckland, NZ

We arrived in Auckland around 8:00 AM.  The weather looks like it is going to be nice with temperatures in the low 70's.  Auckland is the most populous city in New Zealand with a population of just over 1.5 million people.  

We opted for the Viking included tour today since this was a fairly brief port day, only from 8AM to 5PM.  We were here on our previous trip for an overnight stay and had a more extensive visit. 

For those interested, you may view my Auckland blog of 2015 at 

https://worldvoyage2015.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/day-31-february-5-2015-thursday-auckland-new-zealand/

You will want to continue to the next day's post of Feb 6, 2015 for the full story!

The first siting of the city, just before daybreak

I loved the sunbeams coming thru the clouds onto the working dock.

Our first stop was Takaparawhau, Michael Joseph Savage Memorial

We visited here in 2015, but I don't remember the gardens being as extensive.

This is  view of the town of Davenport, across the bay.  On our previous trip we took a ferry from Auckland to Davenport.  It is a really neat little town.

I spotted this guy.  He had really interesting color.  I used the Merlin Bird App to identify him as an Australasian Swamphen.  He apparently is a pretty common urban bird in Australia and New Zealand.

After our scenic ride we were dropped off at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Although the museum's 3 levels covered many aspects of New Zealand, it's primary focus was as a war memorial. 

A Spitfire flown in WWII

 

Kiwi's are difficult to see in the wild, but they are cute little birds.  It is easy to see why the fruit was renamed from  Chinese Gooseberry to Kiwi.

The port entrance building.  It looks like they are setup for large crowds.  The building was a mixture of old and new.  The floors looked to be 100 years old.  Thick worn boards with pegs.  If only they could talk, I bet they would have stories to tell.

This is the driving route we took this morning.  It did give a pretty good overview of downtown Auckland.

Following dinner, and prior to tonight's entertainment, the new group of guest lecturers were introduced.  It is an eclectic group covering a wide area of expertise.  I can only hope they provide to be as engaging as the ones we had on the LA to Auckland leg of our journey.

Today's post was fairly brief, we are in a section of having a port every day for 5 days.  If I am not careful, I will get behind on my posting and it is so difficult to catch up.

Until tomorrow.