We were docked in Auckland by 6am but we chose not to disembark til 9am after our final buffet breakfast. It was easy enough getting off and collecting our cases but the queue for taxis was crazy so we decided to walk to our hotel. The Sky City Grand is only about 1.5km from the port but with it being up hill and pulling our cases it was a bit of a shift! Our hotel lobby was crazy busy, what with all the arriving cruise passengers, the departing cruise passengers and with it being a major public holiday with a regatta on today. We dropped our bags off then headed down to the viaduct marina where lots was going on.

Auckland is known as the city of sails and offers a fantastic marina on a normal day, but today was special because of the regatta and the public holiday. The whole place was alive; there was dragon boat racing, beautiful sail boats and tremendous yachts. We had a walk around before heading to the Seafood Festival for some lunch. The choice of food was incredible but we only had the chance to try just a couple of things as we were not overly hungry.

After heading back to the hotel and checking out our room for the next 4 nights, we had a quick nap before dinner. We had arranged to meet Ryan and Alex from the ship at the marina for some cocktails and also had a reservation in Orbit, which is a revolving restaurant within SkyTower which is 190 meters high. There were fantastic views and the food was good too. We called it a night after a lovely evening and headed back to the hotel.