With a dead phone, I ended up having a lie in this morning with no alarm to work off. Luckily I wasn't up too late with other peoples alarms going off, heading off for a shower and write my blog while I risked charging my phone in the hallway. The plan for the day was basically to go to the sky tower, with little idea of what to do after. Auckland is a really nice place but despite the massive size there are very few cost effective things to do other than perhaps going up volcanoes or going window shopping. To be honest not knowing what to do generally works in my favour because it forces me to explore more.
Heading out in the morning, I walked through the shops before turning off to the imposing sky tower. This unique structure, *cough* Seattle Sydney *cough* was built in the 1990s and is over 300m tall, although the public can only go to about 220m as the top is more for broadcasting. I had three options with the tower, the one I was considering most being the sky jump where you jump off the tower. I opted against this however as it looked pretty tame being a controlled jump unlike a bungy. The other option was the sky walk where you walk around the edge of the tower without a barrier. I thought this was pretty expensive for what it was.
In the end I just opted to go up the tower as I thought I would get just as much out of the experience instead of worrying about a thrill activity. Having a burger king breakfast en route, yes I'm getting bad, I managed to get a discounted rate up the tower as I classed as a concession being a backpacker! We then boarded this lift with a glass bottom, being able to see as we went up through the cylindrical structure. Our first stop was floor 52 I think at 192m. From here we were able to gain 360 degree views of the city, which was on the widest section of the tower. This meant there were also glass floors on the outer rim so we could look straight down!
After a short while here, it was into another lift which took us up to floor 60, at 220m this time I think. This was in a smaller circular area although being higher up you could look down on the buildings a little more. There was even a sweet shop up here and mr sky tower himself who I did his respect handshake with! Before long I headed back down from the sky deck to the observation deck. It was pretty cool watching the people as they jumped off, which was done with three ropes controlling the fall. I spent a fair while on here just sitting on the bench's round the circumference to take in the scenery.
On the level below the observation deck was a cafe, which I looked at but didn't buy anything. The other area on the tower, an area I couldn't visit was the orbit restaurant which was a revolving restaurant. It takes an hour to make one full revolution! By the time I reached the bottom I had spent well in excess of an hour up top, heading straight back to the hostel after a look round the gift shop. When returning I still wasn't sure what to do come afternoon. Under normal circumstances I would have just gone geocaching although I'm awful in city environments as the tall buildings interfere with the gps.
In the end I took a random walk towards the green area I saw from the tower, called the Auckland Domain on my map. En route to this area I got lost however, finding myself within the university campus whilst taking a shortcut! I soon got back on track however and headed through this green area like any other city park up to the Auckland museum. I was going to visit this historical building although I then saw you had to pay to get in, and even from the outside Te Papa in Wellington looked better.
Heading back out another way, I eventually emerged at beach road which surprisingly meant I knew where I was because the kiwi experience office was down here. Passing the old railway station and events arena, I soon got back to the hostel where I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing. I headed out after a short while however to check out the harbour bridge at sunset. I timed it all just right in the end, and even had time for a couple of geocache finds in this area a little more out of town.
By now it was dark, although I bumped into this woman on the way back who told me all about Auckland being a local. I eventually found my way back to the city and after returning to the hostel fulfilled a skype session as this was my last day in NZ and I wasn't sure about WiFi in Fiji. It was all a pretty relaxing evening, although after one last trip to countdown for dinner, I headed out for the football which was reasonable kick off time for once. It was another pretty good evening, although I was outnumbered two to one by Everton fans, although I was the happy one at the end.
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