Landing in the city... Auckland.

We have reached our first stop.. arriving mid-afternoon on Wednesday in the city of Auckland, New Zealand.

I would like to start by saying that the 27 hour plane journey from the UK is as awful as you would imagine, however there were some highpoints.
Firstly, the planes are a-mazing! I am not the best flyer in the world and I don't know anything about planes but this one was absolutely huge. It had every movie, tv show and music playlist imaginable, enough to keep you entertained for quite a while.
Dubai airport was another particular highlight, its a stunning building; so clean and fresh with incredible architecture, as you would imagine!

I did also learn that I am inept at blowing up travel pillows... it took a good half an hour for me to inflate my very expensive, state of the art travel pillow and guess what I did? ... well I left it on the aeroplane didn't I.. good one Gillespie.

The journey was, however, fairly straight forward despite a slight hiccup involving an unfortunate couple of frisk searches and a bag search which resulted in half my belongings, including some of my not-so-sexy underwear sprawled out for all to see.

Landing in Auckland was quite a shock to the system. New Zealand has incredibly strict biosecurity laws and everywhere you walk upon arrival warns of strict punishment if you bring certain foods across the border such as dairy etc - completely understandable, however, in my state of deleria I couldn't remember if rocky roads and chocolate counted as dairy products...so I found myself at the customs desk declaring them, as though they were something sinister... needless to say when I produced the plastic box of homemade rocky roads and the galaxy bar, I was sniggered at.

We eventually made it to the city centre. We caught an airport to city shuttle bus costing us $16 each, by far the cheapest option and they run every 10 minute, so very frequently. It was much harder then you would imagine to alight from a 27 hour flight and not look like a nervous, delirious tourist...I couldn't have looked more stereotypical if I tried but we did okay.

Upon arriving into the city centre we had a slight walk to our hostel...due to an unfortunate miscalculation of where the hostel was on our map, but we did get there and it was a minor victory.

Our first day in Auckland was a good one. The weather was warm and the air was humid. It was actually a national holiday for Waitangi Day which was a nice surprise as it bought a good atmosphere and also drove a lot of people out of the city, so gave us some space. We walked about 30 minutes to Mount Eden which is the second highest point in the Auckland region. It took about 30 minutes to walk up and was stunning! We were able to see the whole of the city from all angles, clearly seeing the harbour as well as the main city. We then spent the afternoon walking down to the ferry ports and looking around.

Our second day in Auckland was spent walking about 20 minutes away to the Auckland museum and park. It is an absolutely massive park boasting beautiful ponds, open spaces and surroundings. There is a very well kept wintergarden and fernery which we spent some time looking around. I didn't think I had a huge appreciation for plants at all but this place was actually very beautiful and well presented, standing on its own within the stunning park surrounds. 

Auckland has been a lovely introduction to New Zealand and two days has been plenty of time to see the main attractions. It has a very busy and cosmopolitan atsmosphere which I can liken to London. It is hugely multi cultural and full of shops, designers, cafes, bars and restaurants. We have already been lucky to meet some great people, namely two hilarious American girls from Georgia. They were a great laugh and did keep us entertained with their travelling tales. 

I have posted a few of our favourite pictures for you to see from our first couple of days and I shall let you know what we get up to at our next destination!

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