One Day in Auckland

Leaving Queenstown was quite sad actually, but we had certainly maximised our time there and only really had 5 days in New Zealand because of where the flights fell. I think we made the right decision to leave Queenstown after just 3 days there, because it meant we have a full day in Auckland, but more importantly, we didn’t have to worry about missing our ongoing flight to Bali.

We arrived in Auckland at about midday and had to leave for the airport the following day at about midday – so we had 24 hours to enjoy the city. We started it off with a quick stop at Auckland’s Lord of the Fries, the same chain we visited in Queenstown. It was soooooo salty! A bit disappointed we headed to our hotel; M Social Auckland, with views looking onto the Marina.

One of the reasons I chose here was the free bike hire they mentioned on the website. The bikes weren’t exactly free, I think we were supposed to pay for them, but they did give them to us for free in the end actually.

The plan was to bike out to Mount Eden through the city, then loop back around to join the famous pink path cycle way. The cycle was really tough going though. Firstly, everywhere seemed to be uphill, pretty much the whole way to Mount Eden. And second, the traffic was pretty bad, with lots of junctions. Perhaps we didn’t take the best cycle route, we just followed Google…

We did make it to mount Eden, albeit hot and sweaty. The views up there were kind of worth it though. You can see the iconic Auckland skyline.

The hill is also important in Maori culture and is actually the site of a dormant volcano…

We were tired, hot, sweaty and sick of the busy traffic roads and it was also now approaching rush hour, so we decided to take the quickest route back to the hotel rather than navigate across town with google to the pink path.

That night we ate at a lovely little restaurant called Cafe Hanoi, rated very highly on Trip Advisor. It was tasty! We stayed for a few drinks afterwards.

The next day, we decided to have an easy morning and a bit of a lie in to recover from the last few days before grabbing the bus back to the airport to catch our onward flight to Bali!

The end of our short trip to New Zealand.

Out of all the things we did and saw on this 3-week adventure, New Zealand was the biggest surprise for us. We just hadn’t expected it to be quite so beautiful. 5 days was certainly not enough, but at least we got the flavour of the country enough to want to return.

If you like this post, check out my other blog posts on New Zealand here:

• Wonder in Queenstown
• Road Trip to Milford Sound
• Day Trip to Arrowtown and Wanaka

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