Today was all about seeing as much as we could of the north island in the short time we had, the best way to do this was by plane and you know how we love a plane! The tour driver picked us up at 0620 where we made our way to North shore airport for the first of four flights for the day. He was a chatty fella for that time of the morning but kept us entertained, we reached the small airfield where our Cessna 172 was taxiing over. There was one local who was takin...

We enjoyed Denny's so much yesterday that yip we went back again today! The things we choose weren’t quite as fine as the day before but good none the less and we would need a full stomach for the activities for the day ahead, wine tasting!!There is an island called Waiheke about 40 mins from the Auckland CBD that is simply known as the island of wine. Without going into all the details it simply has the perfect conditions required for growing all manne...

The day began with breakfast in Denny's. We were surprised to see this American diner in NZ, so had to give it a go. Andrew had Bacon Benny which was eggs benedict served on ciabatta with bacon, cheese sauce and served with hash browns. Mandy had meat lovers skillet which had bacon, ham, sausage, country fried potatoes with an omelette on top. It was right up our street!We had thought about doing the hop-on hop-off bus tour, but since it was such a lovely day...

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...

We were up early today so we could have our breakfast in Blu as we were sailing into port at Tauranga. We had booked a private tour, and met our driver Carolyn at the wharf at 0845 and we were soon on our way.We first drove around Mount Maunganui to see the lovely beaches and holiday homes, then we headed to a Kiwi fruit farm where we tasted different kiwi fruits, dried kiwi fruits, kiwi wine, kiwi juices and kiwi liquor. It was all really good other than the liq...