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After a short 2 hour and 45 minute flight we touched down in Auckland, Kia Ora New Zealand! One thing was clear straight away, New Zealand is rugby made - everything was rugby or world cup related, as you would expect.
It was gone midnight by the time we had left the airport and headed over to our hostel, so it was a quick shower and then bed for us.
One of the first things we needed to do on our first day in Auckland was find a supermarket and get some food in. We did this and walking round the supermarker the price's were a pleasant suprise. Gone were the outrageous prices of Australia and in their place were affordable / cheap items, thank you New Zealand. The one thing that we noticed was the price of banana's. In Australia (due to the floods and cyclone) the price of banana's was through the roof at a whopping $16.99 per KG, where as New Zealand nana's were a mere $2.99 per KG, excellent.
After the boring food shop we realised on our way back to the hostel that New Zealand (as we had been told) was a lot colder than Australia and therefore we went to look for some warmer clothes.
As Auckland is one of the world cup host cities, there are a coupe of 'fan zones' dotted around, where people who have not got tickets to the games can go and watch them on giant screens with other fans. In the afternoon we headed to the main fan park in Auckland to have a look round, where we found bars, food, a huge rugby ball, simulators and massive screens showing the rugby.
Auckland is New Zealands largest city with one thrid of its total population living there, a pretty impressive number. With this in mind we thought we should take a look round, heading to the Auckland Museum. It was about a 30 minute walk from our hostel taking us up through the Auckland CBD and through the Auckland Domain, or to you and me a park, a very nice park though. Large open grassy areas with trees for shade, a cricket pitch and sports field.
The museum is sat on top of a hill and is a particularly grand building, a greek style temple which over looks Auckland from the top of its hill. Although it was a nice bright day in New Zealand, there was quite strong wind, which was especially chilly standing on top of a hill, therefore we headed inside.
The museum is technically 'free' to enter but you are expected to make a donation, one which we thought we could maybe get around, being poor backpackers and all, but this was not the case. The rather stern ticket clerk told us "the recommended donation is $10 each", without even raising a smile, so that was that - we handed it over.
The bonus was that the museum was good, it was quite a random mix of exhibits with sections on Maroi culture, Toys, World War 1&2, Volcano's, Dinosaurs and more, its fair to say we got a lot for our money.
After we had finished we took a stroll back to the hostel in time for the free dinner they put on each night and rested our feet and had a nice cold beer, before turning in for the night.
Saturday, the day of England v Scotland, in Auckland. Now myself or Belle are not huge rugby fans by any means but we wanted to be in Auckland for this game (seen as we were in New Zealand) and even flirted with the idea of buying tickets, until we were realised there were only Category A tickets left, coming in at a whopping $294 each .
We wanted to head down to the main fan park for the game which started at 8:30pm local time but first we needed to get some supplies to take down with us. As beer and food were going to expensive in the fan park we decided to reduce costs and make some sandwiches to take down with us. The next thing we needed to plan was what time to get down there, we were expecting alot of people to be down there for it and didnt want to turn up to late. Therefore we aimed for a casual three hours prior to kick off, in time to watch the game before, Tonga v France. We found a decent spot and got ourselves a beer.
One game down it was now time for the second and main event. There seemed to be ALOT of Scottish people in Auckland and alot which suprisingly had Kiwi accents, I think it is fair to say that me, Belle and the English were the minority. The main bar, which was like a barn, had several big screens in it, plenty of bars and most importantly a roof, as it was wet. It also had the luxury of heat lamps on the ceiling, it was actually too warm at times.
After about 78 minutes (ish) of Scottish cheers, England managed to win the game with a late try, making the victory for England that little bit sweeter and sending the English home happy, us inculded. The fan park was a good atmosphere and great place to watch the game and we were both glad we stuck around in Auckland for it.
The following day was our last day in Auckland, we had now booked our bus onto our next stop and were ready to roll. Auckland is home to the 'Skytower', basically a large tower which looks a bit like the BT tower / a hyperdermic needle, any way for a price you can go up this tower for views out across Auckland, something which we decided we would do. That was until we saw the weather...it was chucking it down. With this in mind we thought we decided the view's of Auckland wouldn't not be great (to say the least) and saved the money for something else on our trip. Therefore we did absolutley nothing all day, bar popping to the supermarket to grab some food. It was a bit of a rubbish way to end our stay in Auckland, but we had done quite a few bits prior.
So that was Auckland, we had stayed for fve nights in total, getting out and about when we could, the weather did try to stop us on a couple of occassions but we didn't let this get us down. We had got involved in rugby fever which was sure to continue for at least the first month of our trip (even longer if the All Blacks win the thing), topped up on some history & culture at the museum and bought a couple of warmer clothes for the chillier climate.
Overall it was a good five nights in the city where one in four people (who live there) own a boat.
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