Day 22 - Tuesday March 5, 2024 - Auckland New Zealand

By Ellen Outten

 


Breakfast at 6 am, on the bus at 8:30 am for a tour if Auckland and the museum.

Our last full day in New Zealand and our last full day of the tour.  

We were promised sunshine, but it didn't quite work out that way. BWe had intermittent heavy showers and some limited sun but it was still an interesting day.


After briefly being shown some of Auckland, we had a 9 am tour, with a private guide.  The museum is dedicated to all those who fought in ANY AND ALL wars fought by New Zealand going back to the Boar Wars.

There was also a great deal of history in the museum about the Maori culture and their interaction with the white man.  

The names of all those people who fought in New Zealand wars 




Made by Australia and given to New Zealand 

Maori carvings

He can shoot a picture and sit down at the same time 


Sir Edmund Hillary's medals from various countries 




The extinct MOA bird which is related to the Kiwi bird.  Also a member of the emu and ostrich family 

The top bone is a chicken bone, the bottom one, from MOA 

Carving is Polynesian. Not as much detail as Maori carvings 

A typical vessel the Maori would make and sail to fish 
The oldest Maori carvings. Dates back to the 1300's
The largest of Maori vessels.  Could seat 50 men 
You didn't sit, you knelt and paddled

A carving presented to the Vatican and rejected as paganism.  It depicts Madonna and the baby Jesus.  

After leaving the museum, we continued with a further 2 hour bus tour of Auckland.  We crossed the Auckland harbor bridge and saw many of the sights of the CBD, the central business district.

The skyline of Auckland 

Sitting out in the harbor, this island is an extinct volcano.  Much of New Zealand is volcanic and much of the south island sits on an earthquake fault.  Tremors are not unusual.




Their Sky Tower, the highest bldg in the southern hemisphere 


We ended our day after the tour.  We are having our farewell dinner tonight at Tony's Steakhouse, an Auckland well known landmark.  Packing an rearranging our suitcase stuff is in order.  Tomorrow has no agenda.  A cab has been ordered to take us to the airport at noon. From there, it's the long rush and wait.  Total travel time is approximately 17 hours.  12 hours to LA. 3 hour layover and then 1 1/2 hours to Phoenix.










Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 4, 2024 at 8:24 PM

    Great Travel Blog and Awesome Post- If you want to know all about Airlines then Visit SkyshipTravel

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aailyah AdebayoMarch 28, 2024 at 6:17 AM

    Embarking on a group tour with TT Tours to New Zealand sounds like a dream come true! The thought of exploring the stunning landscapes, vibrant culture, and adventurous activities with fellow travelers fills me with excitement. I can't wait to immerse myself in the beauty of New Zealand while creating unforgettable memories with like-minded explorers.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 49 - Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - Stockholm Sweden

By Ellen Outten
Image
  What a great tour  today to end 49 days of cruising.  It was a busy morning.  We had to go off ship and through Swedish immigration at 8 am and then I had to check in for our flight.  That's always an "iffy" process with British Air.  You just never know what problems you'll encounter with ship wifi and a crummy British air website.  With boarding passes in hand for the first leg of the flight, we boarded our tour bus at 9 am for our 3 hour bus tour of Stockholm.   We had a great tour guide.  He spoke wonderful English and had a great sense of humor.  He has never been to the US but deemed our bus to all Green Bay Packers and Mets fans!  Huh? We learned a lot. Not just about the city but about living here in Stockholm.   It's a very expensive city and country.  As he walked through the math, I'm not sure wlhiw anyone can afford to live, even in the outlying areas that are less expensive. We stopped at an overlo...
Read more

Day 3 - Wednesday July 19 - Old City of Lucerne and Mt. Pilatus

By Ellen Outten
Image
  Our first day of touring!  We left the hotel at 9 am and headed 15 minutes down the road to the old town of Lucerne for a 2 hour walking tour.   Our first stop, we picked up a local guide who walked us to the Lion Monument.   It commemorates the Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution, when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris. If there's a bench, Wayne will find it. From there we went into the Old City for a guideed tour of some of the famous landmarks.  The most famous is the Chapel Bridge.  The timber bridge, together with the water tower are a landmark of Lucerne.  It burned to the ground in 1993 and was rebuilt in 8 months.  The bridge is 672 feet long and is covered with gorgeous flowers.  This year, the flowers are impatiens.   In past years, Wayne tells me, there were geraniums along the entire length of the bridge. We walked the length of the bridge and looked at som...
Read more

Day 23 - Wednesday March 5, 2024 - On the Way home

By Ellen Outten
Image
  Good to be headed home Lots of thoughts as I end this trip. Until a few days before the end of the trip, I never felt 100% The heat on the first day, combined with the rainforest and feeling faint, throwing up did not do much to set a positive tone for the trip Food never seemed to agree with me.  Wayne kept kidding me about how little I ate, but nothing seemed quite right. Breakfasts were all buffets and the food looked tremendous.  It was pretty much, anything you could want to eat, but...the only thing that seemed to want to stay down was corn flakes and a piece of bread. The boat ride to the great barrier reef made me seasick.  I've never gotten sick on a boat, no matter how small or big or waves or bouncing.  The rolling didn't help.  I guess I should count as positive that I was abled to go down inside the mini submarine but I was sweating and hot but managed to keep it together until we surfaced. We had an amazing Bush Dinner with rib eye steaks an...
Read more