The flight to Auckland had many empty seats, so we sat across three rows. Although the food was standard airplane fare, the movies made the time pass quickly.  We lost a day when we crossed the date line, but made up some time by going through immigration quickly! The M Social Hotel overlooked the marina and was an exceptional base for exploring city.

Highlights included an afternoon at the Auckland Museum of Art.  The portraits of Maori leaders were powerful and we all agreed the 60s avant-garde exhibit was interesting but not our favorite exhibition.

Our GPS got confused often while we walked around Auckland. Recalculating! We did not mind because we had fun getting lost.

The following day we explored the Auckland Museum. The impressive neoclassic temple holds a collection of natural history, island displays and currently has an exhibition featuring a selection of Taonga (treasures) from the private collection of the present Maori King Kiingi Tuheitia. There was a small and interesting butterfly exhibition (4000 specimens with some rare), a volcano simulation room, and we saw our first Maori performance. The sacred grounds were stunning and we walked back through some of the wooded trails.  

The highlights in Auckland included taking a Body Jam classes at the Les Mills gym.  Kaley and Sunshine attended Body Jam in Cambridge and were thrilled to discover Gandolf was teaching the class.  He is the program director of Body Jam.  We loved the class so much that when he said he had a 75-minute dance class the following day, we reorganized our time and went to his class. 

Food was delicious and fun from the coffee at the hotel, chocolate pudding with vanilla ice cream at Soul, and cocktails at Baduzzi. We finally got some spicy curry at Moonsoon.

Evening walks around the wharf were relaxing and beautiful. Everyone said three days would be enough time in Auckland.  We did get a sense of the city but could have stayed longer to explore the nearby islands and hikes.  


1 Comment

Jessicas · March 17, 2019 at 5:40 am

Kaley looks like she took three suitcases of clothes! The Maori art looks wonderful!

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