Today we jumped on the HOHO at 10 am and rode the two circuits around the entire city, red line and blue line. The HOHO gives you a wide brush chance to see what is available to see in a city with the option to Hop off and view an attraction before Hopping back on and moving to the next. Now, in theory this works great but you really need to pick and choose your attractions because time is usually of the essence in that the HOHO stops running at 4:30 pm (in this city) - when you are on cruise ship time this window closes a bit more. For our example, as of last night the viewing attraction option was to be, take the wide brush over most of the city with a good one and half hour break at the Museum. Then hop back on to Queen Street (main shopping area) before heading down to the Ferry terminal to hop over the Devonport Village (12 minute ferry ride away). Our daily program reads an all aboard time of 5:30 pm, okay looks good. This morning at the gangway we see that the all aboard time is short changing us to 4:00 - something about a mandatory life boat drill, huh. It is here when our planned day basically collapses. You know, I get the necessity of life boat drills, especially for any new people (about 20 in this case) but we have already had two drills on this cruise. Further, they should have a separate life boat drill for this small number of new passengers who just embarked and then a monthly scheduled one for all passengers at some point during a sea day rather than taking up important port time. So there is no announcement at all about this, only what is written in the daily program, which includes that the drill is mandatory for all guests and for those who do not attend will not be able to sail with us. I go on a bit about this as it did majorly impact our day as we ended up not visiting the museum but there are passengers on board who did not show up to the ship until after 5 pm, that missed the drill and are still travelling with us. I’ll just say, that I am not impressed. Perhaps we should have also ignored the, so called, mandatory drill. Okay, with that said, I will follow up to see what happened to these passengers as I happened to be using the shore side wifi while this was all going on and know the guests involved.
So as mentioned, we missing the Museum and stayed on the bus until Queen Street, this is a great shopping street with everything from High Fashion names to the basics, we hit the Photo Warehouse for a new charger and the Pharmacy Warehouse for some staple items. Quick walk down to the Ferry terminal to board the Ferry over to Devonport Village - this return Ferry ride was included in our HOHO ticket. Nice fast cat ride - we should have more of these in Vancouver.
Devonport Village is very picturesque with Victorian Villas, stylish shops, beaches and a relaxed seaside ambience. We strolled the village shops and picked up the mandatory magnet and a few other items before heading over the beautiful, Cheltenham Beach. We took a bit of a longer route to the beach to better explore the interesting houses on the street. One had the most beautiful english garden and when we stopped we noticed all these amazing butterflies, they seemed tame and friendly as they flew around us before stopping for photos - not sure if you have ever tried to photograph a butterfly, these were seriously posing, cool. The beach was beautiful with houses right on them. At several times the owners or occupants came out, hung a towel on the fence and went into the water for what looked like a daily swim - so nice and the water temperature was very pleasant. Looking at our watch we had to make a bee line to the ferry in order to not be late for all so important life boat drill, we were back on board at 3:55pm.
Auckland is a beautiful, cosmopolitan city that continues to grow. The residents here love the water as it seems like everyone does something it. Sailing is huge, but so are many other sports, I was able to take a picture of guy sail boarding with a what looked like a hydro board - I did not know that was a thing. The Auckland Museum is supposed to be incredible as is the Aquarium and there are so many more museums as well as areas to hike and then all the professional sports. Perhaps one day we will come back down here for a longer visit as this city has so much to offer.
We wrapped up our day with a great sail away watching all the activity around us and then as I was about to sit down and relax a most beautiful rainbow appeared - wow. Great dinner and show tonight, early day tomorrow, so that’s it. A few pics of our day, hope you enjoy…
Quote of the day - “Every job is good if you do your best and work hard. A man who works hard stinks only to the ones that have nothing to do but smell”. - Laura Ingalls Wilder
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