It had to be an early start today considering it was the beginning of mine and Emilys two week road trip and I hadn't even packed yet. So after two full on hours packing and organizing we were on the road heading to Auckland, the City of Sails. FACT: Auckland has more Sail boats per capita than any other city in the world END FACT.
First stop to check into our "hotel", not that you could really call it that, but it was clean and the beds were comfy so it wasn't all bad.
Next stop the Sky Tower, up to level 53 to the restaurant for lunch. I had promised Mum, Dad and Emily that I would take them out to celebrate the birthdays I had missed this year. After lunch we headed to the observation deck and as expected awesome views.
Now a trip to Auckland would not be complete without heading to Queens Wharf to party central for the Rugby World Cup. This is where the giant rugby ball and the cloud are. Wow!!! Auckland has done well. It had a bad rep in the beginning but this place is the place to be. With big screens everywhere, awesome sound system, live bands, good food, good wine, huge bar area, it's not hard to see why this place goes off when the games are on. We were there during the day but even then the atmosphere was crazy, definite excitement in the air!!
For Emily and I it was back to the "hotel" to get ready for our first quarter final game, England vs France!!
We decided to walk to the stadium. From the city to Eden Park was about 4.5km. They called it the FanTrail and so many other people had also decided to walk it which added to the atmosphere. The walk didn't feel like 4.5ks as there was entertainment the whole way: Free ice creams, face painting, games, bands, mimes, drummers, weirdos and more. The best though was closer to the stadium where a house had the Wales vs Ireland game projected outside their house. This drew the biggest crowd and was where we stopped to watch the last 20mins. Wales took the win which was the result we were after as Wales is our adopted team.
We made it to the game. Had awesome seats up high behind the posts. The atmosphere from the walk had intensified within the stadium, so many people dressed in their team colours, crowd going nuts. I had decided to go for England which turned out to be a bad bet. France did well and deserved the win. Who knows it could be a repeat of 1987 and we could see the ABs and France in the final again....