Bob:

We had a beautiful, top-deck view of Auckland's harbor as the Sun Princess slowly eased up to her berth in the morning. We had decided to use the big walking loop of Auckland suggested by our Insight Pocket Guide, and we were happy to see that our ship was docking just beside the end of the loop that touched the harbor area. We were also docked right next to a very expensive-looking Hilton Hotel, and I wondered how the folks in the hotel felt about us completely blocking their view of the harbor for the day.

Monika:

Bob:

After breakfast we disembarked and walked over to Queen Street, which seemed to be a main commercial avenue, to follow it into town. The eclectic mix of old and new buildings lining Queen Street ranged from historic-looking buildings to tall, modern, glass-covered skyscrapers. The mix and the vibrancy of the Central Business District of Auckland reminded both of us of Melbourne in Australia, for some reason. However, Auckland lacked the free tourist trolley and bus system of Melbourne and instead had diesel busses that gave out noxious clouds of smoke in their wake.

During our climb up the long, gradual slope to the top of a small hill about a mile or two inland on Queen Street, we passed an Internet Cafe and of course stopped in to check on how our new grandson and his mom were doing. Everything seemed OK, so we continued walking uphill until we took a left past an old cemetery with some fine examples of old graves and tombstones. Right after that we used Grafton Bridge to cross a busy interstate road and enter a large city park complex called Auckland Domain.

Monika:

Bob:

Auckland Domain is set in the big, bowl-shaped crater of an old, and hopefully extinct, volcano. We first had to cross the circular drive around the park and that is where Monika decided to make a bold leap off a retaining wall onto the street. Her take off was perfect and her in-flight trajectory was good, but she had trouble on her landing and went rolling onto the pavement. Fortunately no cars were coming but she certainly scared a native who came rushing over to offer assistance. I had intended to detour 20 feet back to a driveway to get down to the roadway, but when Monika took her swan dive I immediately had to jump off the wall after her. Fortunately, she had rolled as she hit the pavement and avoided injuring herself. Unfortunately, her landing had been cushioned by her reading glass case which was now a bunch of plastic fragments. But again fortunately the case had protected her glasses well enough that they were also undamaged. So I dusted her off, transfered her glasses into my sunglass case, and supported her as we pushed on into the park.

We stopped at the Winter Gardens, a complex combining botanical gardens with a hothouse and a coolhouse for growing different kinds of plants. It was a really pretty complex as the two buildings were architecturally connected by a long, graceful pool with classical statues at either end. The hothouse section had exotic tropical plants including many varieties of orchid I had never seen before plus those absolutely huge species of lilly pads (2-feet across!) mixed in with some of their gorgeous white and purple blossoms. Other weird plants were growing there too, of course, including what I called a "woolly caterpillar" plant because the fuzzy purple blossoms resembled the size and shape of the woolly caterpillar in the U.S.

Monika:

Bob:

After touring the hothouse we looked into the Fern Frenzy, a shady grotto carved into the hill between the hothouse and coldhouse that had many of the native flora for the rain forests of New Zealand. I enjoyed both the lush greenery of the very healthy-looking ferns and the beautiful tracery the fern fronds made against the brilliant light blue sky.

Our final stop was the coldhouse, and oddly enough it was the building most crowded with blooming plants. Huge spikes of delphiniums of various shades of blue and purple were set in banks beside the path and gladiolis and other plants I could not identify were also in full bloom. After trying to capture the riot of color and fragrances with pictures, we set off once more in search of the War Memorial Museum that had been mentioned by our guidebook.

Monika:

Bob:

The War Memorial Museum turned out to be just up on another hillock maybe a tenth of a mile away from the Winter Gardens, so it was an easy walk. We entered and paid the requested $5 NZ donation, but the way we were guided to the ticket office made it appear that there wasn't anything really "voluntary" about it. Nonetheless, the museum was well worth that entrance fee so make sure to see it if you ever get to Auckland.

We started off with a section on the Pacific Islands in general which led naturally enough to a large, elaborate section on the Maori settlement of New Zealand. I was very intrigued by the Maori stone and wood artifacts as well as the Meeting House, and a 1825-era Maori war canoe. That was carved out of one really huge log about 80 feet long and carried 100 warriors in its day. Wow.

Monika:

Bob:

The scariest part of the museum was a small section on volcanism, which plays a significant role in New Zealand in general and Auckland in particular, which is built atop 45 momentarily inactive, but not extinct, volcanoes! The scary part was not the rather dry facts or figures, nor even the films of eruptions, but a rather ordinary-looking front room of a house. When the doors opened and we wandered inside, it looked like nothing so much as a typical modern living room with a flat-panel TV on one side and a picture window overlooking Auckland harbor on the other side. The view out over the harbor was tranquil, and the TV went through a normal report when they finally got around to scientific warnings of an impending eruption in the Auckland area and the consequent precautionary evacuation of the inhabitants. The TV report included interviews with political and safety officials plus some "man on the street" interviews that were entirely realistic. But just about then the whole room was jolted by sharp, earthquake-type jolts, the TV station went off the air in a burst of static, and the harbor erupted into a pyroclastic burst of steam and lava that went boiling right up and over the room. The sequence ended with a view of the devestation such an event would wreck on Auckland, which was roughly like the devestation would be wrought by an atomic bomb! It was a very sobering ending.

Another odd little corner of the museum was a room filled with a variety of antique musical instruments. I even found and photographed for Lois an ancestor of the oboe that was physically larger and tuned a fifth lower, as I recall. Rare and unique ancestors to the stringed instruments were also displayed, and reading about them was fascinating. When we ran across an 18th century ball gown, I had to take a picture of that as I thought Lois or Beth would be interested in the sewing details.

Monika:

Bob:

The third floor of the War Memorial Museum was the section dedicated to wars ranging from the Maori and Boer wars up through World Wars I and II. They had a couple of beautifully restored fighter aircraft on display, including a Spitfire and a Zero, and I was fascinated by the personal statement of the young Japanese pilot who had been the last person to fly the Zero. He said that if the war had just lasted another week or two he would have flown the Zero on a final kamikaze mission as it was being repaired and outfitted to carry a 500-lb. bomb. But the historical summary made clear that the crew renovating and converting the airplane had intentionally delayed the repair schedule in an ultimately successful attempt to save the young pilot's life. The wisdom of the older guys taking a subtle strategy to prevent the young man from throwing away his life in a lost cause was very poignant for me.

Monika:

Bob:

Rejoining Monika in the cafeteria, where she was settled in with a latte, we exitted the museum and worked our way back down the side of the volcano and slowly back into town. Along the way we had some nice views and passed some very nice city neighborhoods, but my inescapable and overwhelming impression of Auckland was of a big, busy city, which was a completely different impression than we had from any of the other stops in New Zealand.

I stopped in a convenience store to try to buy some pretzels, but realized it was a lost cause when I had to try to explain to the proprietor exactly what a pretzel was. I started out saying, "Well, it's shaped like a pretzel..." whereupon I suddenly realized it was hopeless. However, when we finished up the day at the shopping mall near where the ship docked, I surprisingly found a bag of pretzels in the New Zealand equivalent of a dollar or remainder store! Even more surprising, the pretzels turned out to be made back in the U.S.A. but then imported and repackaged in New Zealand! Despite the long ocean journey the pretzels seemed quite fresh and we enjoyed them with some wine and Coke when we returned to the ship late that afternoon. Although the bag cost $4 NZ, it was large enough to keep us supplied for the remainder of the cruise. In the evening we had our usual convivial dinner with our nice tablemates. The evening show included dance routines as its focus, and the Viennese Waltz section was a hilarious spoof of Viennese society in the late 1800s. Fortunately the show was early, because afterwards the exhaustion from a long day of walking finally took its toll and we turned in early.

Monika: