My Favorite A to Z Travel Destination — Amazing Auckland

The first stop on our first and only trip down under

Adrienne Beaumont just challenged me to come up with 26 of my favorite destinations, A to Z. Ooh, I have some catching up to do — she just published her K story. So, without further ado, here we go with my A story.

We made our first and only trip across the equator one day in 2011 when we flew from San Francisco to Auckland on Air New Zealand. I’m pretty sure it was our longest flight, too.

We took the shuttle from the airport directly to our hotel but were then told that our room would not be ready for three or four hours. So, we took the ferry to Devonport, walked around town and drank our first-ever cuppa flat white. Then back to our hotel.

We made a reservation for a standard room with a king-size bed. But the only room with a king bed available was a fancy corner unit that featured a wrap-around balcony and two sliding glass doors and sensational views of both the harbor and downtown Auckland. The upgrade was completely free. The wait for the room to be ready was worth it!

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the waterfront neighborhood, admiring all of the lovely racing yachts we saw here and there but mostly in Viaduct Harbor. We soon found out the three most important things to know about New Zealand: (1) New Zealanders call themselves Kiwis; (2) they are all rugby fanatics and just about everybody follows the national team which is called the All Blacks; and (3) they are also crazy about racing yachts and the whole country goes nuts when they win the America’s Cup (they won in 1995 and 2000, and more recently in 2017 and 2021).

We also discovered that some of these yachts are available for rent and you can take a harbor tour in some of them.

One of the first things we did on our second day in Auckland was to hop on a sightseeing bus. We were disappointed in what Auckland had to offer in this regard. I hear they have open-air, double-decked buses with full narration nowadays, but we had none of these features eleven years ago. Most of the photos I took through windows contained nasty reflections. I did get one good shot of the Sky Tower when we drove by, though. It’s the tallest building in the southern hemisphere!

After the bus tour, we decided to visit the tower which is part of a casino complex called Sky City. We spent a little more than an hour at the observation deck near the top and gazed at the splendid views and watched people jump off the tower.

Oh yeah, that’s another thing about kiwis: they love to jump off bridges and towers and things. It’s called bungee jumping and people come from all over the world just to jump off places in New Zealand! For all I know, the people we saw jumping that day may all have been tourists. The three who jumped while we were at the observation deck were all women. I’m not sure of this significance. Are women more daredevils than men?

“Water, water everywhere,” the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote. That’s another thing about Auckland. According to Google, there are more than 135,000 boats registered in Auckland, a city of 1.45 million people. That’s one boat for every eleven people living there!

On our third and final day in Auckland, we went on a ride on another ferry to Waiheke island. We then spent the day exploring the island, admiring the pleasant views, talking to the pleasant people, and visiting three of the local wineries. They were pleasant, too!

I hear they are a tad pricey these days, though. Just like our Napa Valley wineries back home. Back in the day, we used to go wine tasting for free. Now they charge an arm and a leg.

Our guide for the day was a transplant from England who had spent many years on Waiheke and had many interesting things to say about the place. He told us that the very, very rich are taking over the island and soon no one else will be able to afford to live there.

We watched the sun set as we cruised back to Auckland that evening. Spectacular!

That night we ended our stay in Auckland over a few cocktails with one of many Irish cousins we have met on our travels. Jewel’s grandfather emigrated from County Down in the 1920s.

The next day we flew to Wellington. Oh, you may have to wait a while until I get to W!

Here’s Adrienne’s A story. Come join the fun!