We arrived in Auckland on Thursday evening (10/10/13) and checked into our hostel - we were pleasantly surprised after our horrible last night in Fiji! We had a private room and were only 1 minute away from Queen Street which is where most the shops and restaurants are. We found a nice bar to go and enjoy some more lovely NZ wine then had an early first night. Day 2 was a bit more exciting, firstly we booked our bus tour for the rest of NZ (we are doing the Max route with Stray tours) then we wandered around the shops for a bit. In the evening we decided to try and not look like backpackers for a night and treat ourselves to dinner in the sky tower's revolving restaurant called Orbit which is on the 59th floor and continuously spins around so you get amazing views of the city! After dinner we went to a few bars and a club.
On day 3 we had our wine tasting tour on Waiheke island which is about 40 minutes away from Auckland by ferry, we visited 3 different vineyards called Mudrock, Goldie's and Te Whau and sampled about 3-4 wines in each of them...thankfully the second one gave us some nibbles otherwise I'd have been falling over come the end!!
So tomorrow is when the NZ adventure begins and we head to our first destination on the route which is Raglan. It's apparently surfers paradise so hopefully will have a nice beach, although the weather is rubbish at the moment! I need summer to hurry up so I can work on getting a tan!!!