A month in New Zealand

Thu 6 Mar 2025 Less and less to report as we head home! After a slightly shoddy stay at the Ibis Budget Hotel near Auckland Airport, we caught our flight back with a change at Singapore. Singapore is a nice airport to stop over at, which is lucky as we were there for around six hours. It has a cactus garden and lily garden. We spotted a tiny lizard in the cactus garden - you can just make it out in our attempted picture. The last leg, getting us into Heathrow over 36 hours after we left our hotel. It was good to drop into Susheel's parents for some respite, trying to drag out staying awake until the evening to get ourselves into the right time zone!

  Wed 5 Mar 2025 We fly out tomorrow, so we've had some last moments strolling around Wynyard marina near where we were staying. We did notice that there were various painted sculptures of Kiwis around, much like Bristol has had with Gromits and Gorillas.

Tue 4 Mar 2025 After a lazier start, thinking about heading to packing down for our flight in a couple of days, we strolled the slightly more bohemian K Road end of the city. We had a coffee in the Kelvin Arcade which had lovely views overlooking the Myers Park and the Sky Tower. We then went out for possibly the best and most flavoursome meal at Java, an Indonesian restaurant. You can find excellent Southeast Asian here in Auckland - we ate SO MUCH!  

Mon 3 Mar 2025 In the morning, we strolled over to the Sky Tower for views across Auckland. There is a platform where you can stand on thick glass with nothing below you - Bert and Ernie feared they were falling to the ground. During the afternoon, we headed by bus along the lovely Tamaki Drive. En route, we got view across to Auckland before arriving at Mission Bay beach for what is likely to be our final seaside swim of the holiday. We also made sure we went to the fresh fish and seafood market around the corner from the apartment, and made ourselves a meal using scallops and giant prawns.  

Sun 2 Mar 2025 Today we said goodbye to Wellington and took the scenic "luxury" Northern Explorer train to Auckland. Unfortunately, the kitchen carriage had broken down, so the experience wasn't quite what it should have been though the approach of the service staff rescued the experience somewhat.