December 28, 2023 – January 1, 2024

Our last day in Auckland would be a lazy one, with Joanna and Marty heading off to the Auckland War Memorial Museum while Kim, Bev and I would Uber to the harbor and stroll about there.  The museum is one of New Zealand’s most important museums and war memorials and its neoclassical building constructed in the 1920s and 1950s, stands on Observatory Hill, the remains of a dormant volcano, and its collections concentrate on New Zealand history (and especially the history of the Auckland Region), natural history, and military history.

The three of us were dropped off near the Old Ferry Terminal building, which is adjacent to Auckland’s Queen’s Wharf which is home to the Main Cruise Dock and next to the Princess Wharf, home to the Auckland Cruise Ship Terminal.  As we would experience working our way south on both islands, with stops in Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch, that each were docking points for the thriving cruise industry that plies the eastern coast of New Zealand. 

Auckland hosts around 100 cruise ships annually, including but not limited to Azamara Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, Cunard Cruises, Holland America Line, Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises, P&O Cruises Australia, and P&O Cruises UK.  The day we were there the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth, which at 965 feet in length sails with 2,081 passengers and 911 crew members.  It’s about the same size and age as its sister ship the Queen Victoria, with an older Queen Mary 2, built in 2003, handling 2,700 passengers and coming online this year, the Queen Anne at 1,058 in length will accommodate 2,996 passengers and 1,225 crew members. 

We would continue to discover as our journey continued here and in Australia, that many of the cities we visited were founded because they were sited in a great harbor.  Auckland is no exception with two of them the isthmus: Waitematā Harbor to the north, which extends east to the Hauraki Gulf and thence to the Pacific Ocean, and Manukau Harbor to the south, which opens west to the Tasman Sea.

We walked west on Quay Street until we came to the New Zealand Maritime Museum.  We decided to pass on the museum but did stop for a few moments to check out the display outside of the KZ1, a one-off sailing yacht built to challenge for the 1988 America’s Cup.  She was designed by Bruce Farr and is constructed from a carbon fiber and Kevlar/Nomex sandwich. 

For that race, lacking time and looking to protect the planned international event in 1992, Dennis Conner and his team defended with one of two catamarans, Stars & Stripes (US 1) a wing masted catamaran, built for the challenge that Conner sailed to easily win the challenge.  Following the race the New Zealand team sued and initially won the America’s Cup trophy in a court case, but the decision was reversed on appeal and the San Diego Yacht Club retained the Cup.

We stopped in briefly at the Museum to check out its gift shop and then continued around the corner to Hobson Wharf which was built in 1928, and for many years served as a shipping quay for the city.  As it had limited maintenance completed on the sub floor structure over the years, a 2014 condition assessment found that several elements were needing restoration to bring them back to their full usability.  

Given that the wharf is no longer used for freight, it has been repurposed as an outdoor venue and scenic attraction that includes artificial grass mounds for reclining under clear skies, timber and steel frame canopies with tables and seating to provide shelter in the summer, a flag forest, and for me, best of all a knot tying station.  In high school I participated in the Boy Scout variant known as Sea Scouts and among other activities we engaged in I learned to tie all kinds of handy knots, all of which I’d completely forgotten how to do.  I thoroughly enjoyed practicing again and of course, forgot how to do so as soon as we left the wharf. 

Finished at the wharf we walked back towards the Ferry building and then up Queen Street, a major downtown shopping destination to see about stopping in at the North Face store for a portable coffee filter, as I’d neglected to bring my collapsible one (it can be used with or without a paper filter).  Our Airbnb had coffee making set up and we thought this might be the case as we traveled on, so sought to keep from having to always drink instant coffee.  North Face was closed that day and fortunately, almost every other place we visited either had a French Press coffee maker or some form of a Nespresso machine. 

We decided to cook dinner that night and so, backtracked to Tangihua and Quay Street to a Countdown market to pick up the supplies we would need.  Countdown is an Australian-owned New Zealand full-service supermarket chain and subsidiary of Woolworths New Zealand, itself a subsidiary of Australia’s Woolworths Group.  There are 194 Countdown stores, with 61 in Auckland and in July 2023, the company announced that all Countdown stores will be rebranded back to Woolworths. 

We would subsequently use Countdown as a shopping option along with other smaller local chains for our needs, but curiously, although we had planned otherwise, did not actually do much cooking after the meal in Auckland.  A simple dinner of spaghetti and salad was good for all, and we got ready to leave the next morning for Tauranga and our first exposure to InterCity, the New Zealand Bus company.  As our bus didn’t depart until 12:40pm, we had time for breakfast and so checked out at 10am and rolled our bags a few blocks over to Winona Forever, recommended by our host and other online reviews. 

It was crowded when we arrived but we managed to get seated at a table large enough for all of us and we ordered, a latte apiece for Joanna and I (as we would discover, both here and in Australia, they don’t typically served brewed coffee as we know it.  Almost all is an expresso drink of some fashion).  Joanna went for the Beans is Beans (Pea and edamame beans with poached egg, feta, avocado, chili & mint, served with beetroot hummus on kumara sourdough with turmeric dukkah, seasonal greens, cherry tomatoes, chili hair and freeze-dried balsamic chunks, and manuka honey chunks) and I got the Fang Lemon Goat Cheese Omelet (Folded omelet filled with lemon goat cheese , arugula, cherry tomatoes, crispy shallots, baby carrots, roasted pepper salsa on Russian rye bread).

Joanna liked her choice, but mine was just OK, not something I would have normally ordered as honestly, there were limited options on the menu.  We left full though, a good thing as we’d be on the bus all afternoon with no opportunity to get other food, so it worked out fine.  In the end, our tab ended up at 65.40NZ ($44), not much more than we would spend for a nice breakfast here in Los Angeles, mainly due to sales tax being included in the price of the item and one isn’t required to leave a tip.  Next up, we travel on south. 

Links

Auckland War Memorial Museum: https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/

KZ1: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/kz1

Hobson Wharf: https://heartofthecity.co.nz/all-you-need/hobson-wharf

Sea Scouts: https://seascout.org/

Countdown: https://www.countdown.co.nz/

Winona Forever: https://winonaforever.co.nz/