We start out this morning by catching what has become our regular bus service from Northcote into Auckland. First on the itinerary today is a harbour cruise, which we have booked for 1030

The bus arrives at the Harbour at just before 1000, so we pick up our tickets, and grab a coffee before joining the boat for our tour.

The tour is scheduled to take 90 minutes and starts out on time, and is pretty full on the top deck as we depart on our tour.

We head out over the calm waters past the Bean Rock Lighthouse towards Rangitoto Island where we berth for about 10 minutes to enable guests doing a different tour to get off the boat, and for us to explore briefly if we wish, but we stay on board as we are coming here tomorrow for a full tour.

After we set from Rangitoto, we head past North Head and the Navel Base at Devonport before making our way over to, and under the Auckland Harbour Bridge, then past the Westhaven Marina and back to the ferry building where we started.

The $38 ticket also gives us a free ferry ride to Devonport, which we will take this afternoon, after grabbing some lunch.

The ferry to Devonport departs every half hour, and only takes ten minutes. We make the crossing and then head towards Mount Victoria. The road to the summit is extremely steep on foot, but does provide some amazing photo opportunities back across to Auckland and across the bay to the volcanic islands.

The main town itself is small, and very old English looking. Worth a visit to the Devonport chocolate shop, where all the chocolates are home made, in the factory area that you can see through to from the main shop front.

We spend a few hours over in Devonport before heading back on the ferry to Auckland Harbour, and then taking a walk up Queens Street to find Groovy Records, New Zealand's largest record store. The place is huge, and is difficult to know where to start in there, with over 50,000 items for sale, both new and second hand, the kind of place I could spend hours and plenty of dollars. I'll be back there later in the week I'm sure.

Buses back to Northcote in the evening are less frequent, at once every hour, and typically, we have a 50 minute wait, having just missed one, but head back to the hotel, watch Georgia beat Romania and call it a night shortly after.