Day 10 - Fri 19Apr2024 - Auckland, NZ

 It was a short sail south to Auckland and when we woke up this morning at 7am, we were already docked next to the Hilton without a noise or any feeling.  We took another Princess Excursion which had an abbreviated city tour by motor coach, a visit to the Weta Workshop Unleashed, and a visit to the Sky Tower.  Our full coach of 47 people toured out to the Maori grounds and war memorial, the War Museum, and through a few neighborhoods before we were dropped off at the base of the Sky Tower.  


Our Weta guides met us and escorted us to the Weta attraction which is somewhat similar to the Weta Workshop in Wellington, NZ.  This tour was, however, a bit more theatric with too much darkness for my taste as it made photography pretty challenging.  But we enjoyed it.  



Our guides then took us over to the SKY Tower and we were quickly whisked up to the Observation Level.  We enjoyed the views and encountered our friends, Jo Ann and Gary there. So we took some commemorative photos before we separated to do our own touring.  




Angela and I took the elevator back down and looked for a place to eat. we told our bus driver we would walk back to the ship and decided on the nearby Mexican cafe for lunch to see what Mexican food served in New Zealand would taste like.  It was really good!  We also did some shopping for snack gifts for our room steward and ourselves and also enjoyed a real donut from Dunkin' Donuts. We shopped along Queen Street on our way back to the ship and reboarded around 4pm for a 6:45pm onboard time.  We find Auckland to be a very walkable city with lots to see around the Harbor area.  HOP ON HOP OFF buses can be used tor a bigger sightseeing radius.  

Ceviche

Burrito


Chips with an excellent dip


We had a light dinner before watching a new comedian, Tom Simmons.  He was okay, but not as funny as the Irish comedian, William Caufield.  We watched another dorky game show on a Hollywood theme.  It's not ready for prime time.  Angela stayed in Princess Live for the late night karaoke while I came back to the room to update my blog.  I ran into Doug and Linda and we caught up about the last few days. We'll likely see them more on the upcoming season days.


Today around 700 guests disembarked and 400 new guests embarked.  So we should have about 2700 guests onboard for the crossing with a capacity of 4,000 guests.  Olivia's welcome joke for the new guests was that they joined to enjoy sea days as we have 6 sea days to our next port of call, Papeete, French Polynesia.  Just after 7pm, we left our berth and headed out to sea.  We're the next to last major ship in Auckland with the Coral Princess arriving in a week.

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