Auckland - The city of Sails

So far our week in the The land of the long white cloud has sent us from Wellington to Auckland and now we are on the return journey as I write. 

I'm going to cover a day adventure in Auckland which you could stretch out too a two day adventure depending if you have the time and money. 

First lets talk a little about the city itself. Many people I've talked too think that Auckland is the capital of NZ, which isn't true. Even though it is very large place and had a recorded population of 1.4 million in January 2011, Wellington is the actual capital of NZ has only 204,000 recorded in 2013. It has been nicknamed the city of sails due to how many boats can be seen in the waters around the city.

 

My wife being a kiwi had grown up around Auckland while this was my first visit. This gave us the insider knowledge on where to visit and how to plan our day. 

We were saying out of the CBD in a suburb up on the hills called Glenfield, approximately 20mins away. This brings up my first tip, if you can stay out of the city of you plan to drive anywhere. There are a variety of smaller places you can stay and aslong as you don't leave during school hours you won't get as much traffic. We all know how traffic ruins your day. 

We left Glenfield at 9am and were heading for Devonport. Devonport is a nice little town that is located across the bay from the CBD and has a few attractions to see as well as commuter bonuses.

Firstly Devonport is home to North Head which since 1885 has been the main coastal defence installation. No longer used but preserved for anyone who wishes to explore. The site itself has parking Takarunga Road and leaves you right out front of your first concrete tunnel system to explore. 

If your a step chaser and want that 10,000 steps you can achieve this by zipping up and down the pathways made by other visitors or you can be the opposite and take your time exploring the other areas. With a variety of underground and above ground sites to look at you can spend easily an hour or more here. We found ourselves looking down every dark corridor looking for secret hiding holes and maybe something that linked to the history of the place. 

If you navigate to the top of the hill and towards the CBD edge you will find a well preserved 'disappearing gun' which is a part of the South battery.

Once you return to your car you can travel back down the hill and towards the ferry terminal. We had a quick visit to the Torpedo Bay Navy museum to end our military exploration for the day. 

A great part of Devonport is that you can park your car in a 24hour spot and catch the ferry over to Auckland CBD. The parking is free but the ferry will set you back $12 return per person. I recommend catching the ferry, getting some wind in your hair, saving yourself the pain of navigating the CBD and paying top dollars for parking.

Auckland City has many attractions that are spread out and that brings me to the next tip for our adventure. As soon as you get off the ferry terminal you can go to the information booth and buy yourself a Auckland Explorer ticket which allows you to catch the hop on hop off bus for the day at various locations. This made our day super easy as all we needed to do was wait for a bus between locations.

 

The bus line is split into red and blue which changes at the museum. We had limited time in our day and stuck to the red line, but if you want to see the zoo and Mt Eden you can go on the blue line.

Our first stop was Kelly Tarlton's underwater adventures. A huge penguin colony, giant sting rays, sharks and loads of fish species makes this a great visual attraction for all ages. If you visit on certain times you may even be treated to the feeding of some animals.

It cost about $25 pp and that gives you entry to everything including the fun looking children play area if your that way inclined. 

Back on the bus we were travelling through Parnell to the Auckland Museum. Parnell had many old colonial style buildings that had been renovated into great little cafes and boutique stores, sadly we didn't have the time to visit those.

The Auckland Museum is massive. It has many different exhibits ranging from the war exhibits, toys, crafts, clothes and Maori art. 

 

Firstly I was turned off by the fact that the entry fee was $25 for international visitors but free for Auckland residents. Luckily for us we charmed our way in for free.

With three levels you could spend a lot of time here if you like the history. I learnt a little about the wars of NZ but the rest we sped past rather quick. The coolest exhibit was hidden right on the top floor and was a mine craft recreation of Gallipoli. We had the chance to use Oculus rift googles to fly around the student designed Minecraft recreation. 

We hopped back back on the bus and decided our next stop would be Sky City, the sky tower and casino. It was only a short drive and we arrived on the door step of the tower just as someone took the leap of faith and plummeted into the foam mat. It was absolutely crazy, it left me wanting to do it.

I thought the sky tower would be free because they could make money of us when we were up there, but once again there was a small fee just to open the elevator.

We decided to go to the 51st floor cafe for a coffee and stepped inside the glass floored elevator and shot up all the levels in seconds. It took 41seconds to get there if I remember. 

The cafe had a great 360 panorama window and was pretty quiet on our visit. We sat down for a great coffee and took a few photos of those below us. 

If you don't feel like spending more money you can head up to the higher floor and look through the glass floor or if you dare organise to jump of the tower, which I couldn't afford this time.

Once your finished in the tower you can venture down and across into the casino which has a great range of table games and pokies. We found our favourites from when were in Las Vegas, the Ghostbusters machine. I struck out and lost my money while my wife made up for my loss on her machine.

After an hour there our day was running to an end so we jumped back on the bus and dos the return trip to Devonport and retrieved our vehicle free of charge before heading home.

So from my time in Auckland I can see that is a great city but it's pretty expensive if you want to do all the good attractions. We easily spent a couple hundred dollars between two people in our visit. If you had a longer stay you could also visit the zoo, Mt Eden and the other attractions on the blue bus line if you do the hop on hop off experience.

So in summary here are my tips for visits to Auckland:

Park your car in Devonport and ferry over so you can see both sides in the one day. It's cheaper and less frustrating to do so.

Buy tickets to the Auckland explorer for an easy flowing visit to the attractions.

Try and get your tickets in advance to save some money to attractions.

Stay outside of the city if you self drive to avoid the traffic. 

Pick your top 4 attractions that stand out to you and go with that so you can spend enough time enjoying them.

To finish up here is a picture of me pondering about North Head in a cave. 

For more photos follow me on Instagram:

@shanwowmagic 

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