When we bought our bus pass for New Zealand back in January we ended up having some hours left over, once we'd booked all of our travel. So we decided to use them to go on a city tour of Auckland on our last day. The weather was really changeable today, so it started off raining as we walked to the bus stop, and then soon went to bright blue skies, later to really strong winds, then back to rain then sun. Talk about 4 seasons in 1 day! Our tour started off by driving across the Auckland Harbour Bridge to the North Shore, before coming back again and stopping at the docks to get photos of the bridge and the harbour. The bridge here is like a smaller version of the Sydney Harbour Bridge - people call it the coat hanger, but it is a lot lot smaller - still nice, just not quite as impressive as the one in Oz. From the docks we drove through the city centre, past the university, hospital, war museum and lots of gardens before stopping in the inner city suburb of Parnell to get coffee. After refreshments we drove along the waterfront, past multi- million pound mansions and massive yachts in the marinas, up to Bastian Point. There is a really nice memorial garden to a New Zealand Prime Minister from the 1940s, and great views of the city and out to the Pacific Ocean, where you can see lots of islands including Rangitoto which is the youngest and largest volcano in Auckland. Once we'd got all our photos it was back on the bus to be dropped off in the city again. After the tour we looked around for somewhere to eat lunch, and Joel found an Italian restaurant where they had a $10 lunch menu - it was right in our budget and the food tasted great too, the best we'd eaten in ages! For our last outing of the day we went back to Sky City and got on an elevator up the Sky Tower - unfortunately the top viewing floor was closed for refurbishments, but even on the lower deck we had amazing views of the city, out to the Pacific Ocean in the east and to the Tasman Sea in the west. The weather had even cleared for us at this point so the views were really clear in all directions. Afterwards we decided to head back to the hostel, because we had loads to do to get ready for our very early pick up tomorrow morning to get to the airport - off to Fiji for some much needed sunshine!