2017-10 First day in Auckland, New Zealand!

Finally made it to Auckland, New Zealand! My first impression of New Zealand: cloudy like Iceland but slightly warmer, like Seattle in February. There were even palm trees and trees with different type of ferns/fronds. It is nice to understand at least 70% of the English spoken here! It's spring here and very green. At the airport, my first stop was the "i-SITE" tourist office, where they provided me with a Central Auckland map and sold me on a SkyBus pass for $18 to get downtown. It is similar to an airport shuttle, with large racks for luggage; and, the SkyBus dropped me a block away from my hostel: Nomad's Auckland.

Some interesting things that I saw on the bus:
- All the parks have cricket pitches, even the school fields. There are shorter goal posts at the ends of each field, which someone mentioned is for "footie", also known as rugby. These are the two main sports in New Zealand.
- There are no shingled roofs: most are Spanish style tile or tin.
- Gas at the Mobil station is $1.90 per liter

Nomad's Auckland is in the center of Auckland, just off Queen Street. While it was too early to check-in, I was able to leave my luggage next door in the Mad Travel Shop. This is also the only source of WiFi for the hostel. Sadly the Mad office (and WiFi) close at 7.

Food is extremely expensive in NZ. The hostel receptionist recommended that I go next door to Queen's Kebabs for their $5 lunch kebab. It was completely worth it, even if I did have to keep an eye on the birds wanting my crumbs. Here, the scavenger birds are sparrows. Three sparrows hopped up on the outdoor tables and snatched up bits of lettuce and pita crumbs that we diners dropped on the table.

Sparrow crumb snatcher at Queen's Kebabs

Next, I walked to the Auckland Art Museum via the street one block off of Queen. The street was packed with little cafes and restaurants, mostly Asian (Thai, Japanese, etc). The Art Museum is free except for any special exhibits. It was my first exposure to New Zealand artists. Perhaps the most impressive is the exhibit on Charles Goldie and all the portraits that he did of Maori elders in the 1800s. Surprisingly, half the elders seem to women and the other half are men.

Maori chieftainess portrait by Charles Goldie

The museum sits next to Albert Park. While I was sitting on a bench in the corner to take on the view from the floor to ceiling windows, two young men stopped to question me about why I was traveling to NZ for their school hospitality project at Cornell. While I am a tourist at the moment, tourism does seem to be a very popular field of study (or maybe it's just the people that I'm meeting while being a tourist). After answering their questions, I popped into the cafe for a chai to keep me going. The cafe had more large windows to Albert Park. My server was actually from California, taking time off from the corporate life to work in Australia and NZ. Even in the cafe, two sparrows swooped over our heads and then settled under some tables.

Idyllic bench in the Art Museum, facing out to Albert Park

The server had recommended seeing the War Memorial. Therefore, I packed up and walked past the University of Auckland to get to The Domain park, walking up the Centennial Trail. As I trudged slowly, out-of-breath up the paved trail, students passed me like I was standing still. The park was gorgeous with birds singing, ancient looking trees and conveniently placed benches. After wearing three layers up to this point (long-sleeve shirt, light weight jacket and down jacket), I was down to just my long-sleeve shirt while slogging uphill.

Winter Garden in the Domain park

Within the Domain, the highlights were the Winter Garden with it's cool house and hot house as well as the war memorial. Finally, I made it to the top of the Domain and looked across the many white crosses of the war memorial to the bay down below.

Looking down toward the bay from the War Memorial