This morning for breakfast, I had cereal (Vanilla Almond Cluster Crisps), and a feijoa. The feijoa is a little green fruit that looks like an avocado a bit. The texture is like a pear, but smells like a kiwi. It tastes like a sweet tart candy (sweet like candy but also is sour and tangy).

We went out, walking by the harbour on our way to the fish market. It was a nice sunny day with lots of boats and yachts.

We crossed a bridge that lifts up to let boats through (Wynyard Bridge). There were some funny things along the way including short colourful chairs on artificial turf, and washrooms in railroad train carts.

We arrived at the fish market soon after. It was a lot of fun looking at all the produce and fish for sale, as there are many different things being sold there compared to at home.

From the fish market we bought live mussels and a whole trevally fish.

We headed back to the room, first stopping at the Voyageur Maritime Museum. Here, there were exhibits about yacht building and racing for the America’s Cup. There were also displays of lighthouses, historical ships, and Maori canoes.

After this museum we had lunch back at our room and cooked up the trevally fillets. I also had brown rice and some yogurt.

In the afternoon we walked away from the city centre, past the University of Auckland to Auckland Domain, a large park. The Auckland War Museum is also in the Auckland Domain, and we went through some paths to get there (Domain Walk). The vegetation is like a jungle with lots of ferns and large trees (redwood, norfolk pine, etc.)

The museum had a Maori presentation at 1:30 PM. In the show, the Maori sang songs, such as one for battle. They also demonstrated some of their pastimes such as swinging a ball on a string, and wooden sticks. We walked around the museum after that, and saw a Maori artifacts exhibit, Pacific lifestyles (items from indigenous people on Southern Islands like Tonga, Cook Islands, Fiji, etc.), natural history, and volcanoes. There was an entertaining exhibit in the volcano section where you sit in a “house” and it simulates an underwater volcano erupting in the bay “outside”.

Despite being called a war museum, this museum is actually more a general museum. But also, we didn’t actually have enough time to visit the third floor with the war exhibits. We walked back to our room after we had finished looking.

For supper, we cooked up the live New Zealand mussels we got from the market, which were really big! They were also really yummy. We ate these with some broccoli and brown rice.

After just arriving at a new place, it’s always a good time when you go for a walk to look around and explore. Everything you see is new – the buildings and streets, plants, and people.

After leaving the Sky Tower, we tried to walk to the “Victoria Park Market“. Well, it turns out there was nothing to see here except for an old and unusual chimney on one of the buildings. Instead, we went a few blocks further and went into a large building that looked like a warehouse, but had a couple of stores in it – Helen Cherry and a coffee shop/historic motorcycles display. Other than this, there wasn’t much here either. Apparently, this building was mostly being used as a big car park, but the space was also being rented out to the couple shops here.

Continuing our walk, we went towards the harbour. First we went by Viaduct Harbour. This used to be the old harbour in Auckland, but has since been converted to upscale shops. Eventually, we came near the water, and walked around the Viaduct Basin. The ocean was quite beautiful.

Continuing along the water, we went by the National Maritime Museum and made note that we would have to take some time to visit here at some point during our visit in the city. Then we went down a wharf. Here, there were some unusual buildings, which were shaped to look like two ships. This was actually a Hilton hotel.

Past the wharf, we went by the Ferry building. Also there was a neat looking shark bus parked by the road!

For lunch we stopped by a mall. We ate at St. Pierre’s Sushi at a food court. My food had sushi, salad, shrimps, some fish ball sort of things (?) and sashimi.

Then we went to an electronics store to buy a GPS with NZ maps, and a Countdown supermarket on Quay Street to pick up some groceries for dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast. For the afternoon, we had a quiet time in the room as we were tired from the long travel to New Zealand today.

For supper, we had lamb chops, broccoli and brown rice. I also ate a beurre bosch pear. We didn’t do much after supper and went to sleep fairly early. Good night!