We spent Monday taking two bus tours and a self-directed walking tour we found on the net. We stopped in Auckland when we took our cruise to Australia, but that was 8 years ago, so we thought we would take another tour around this beautiful city.
Those dots on the side of the building are actually tennis balls!
Mexican restaurant where we had lunch - delicious!
The walking tour was interesting - a little bit about the history of that part of the city - Uptown. It was a nice day and we were good and tired by the end of it.
An arcade - shops on both sides with an overhead see-through roof
The local McDonald's - the condition of buying it was that they had to keep the outside facade in the olden day style - love the architecture
Wooden carved statue which is a gateway to a park
Fabulous architecture!
The Auckland art gallery - Dad and I went inside, but there wasn't that much to see
A selfie on the bus
The walking tour was interesting - a little bit about the history of that part of the city - Uptown. It was a nice day and we were good and tired by the end of it.
Isn't this building cool? It's like an optical illusion
Tuesday, we took a ferry over to Devonport. It was a choppy day on the seas, so I was a bit worried that I would be sick on the way over. However, I asked one of the crew where the best place to sit was and he told at the back facing forward, so I followed his advice and had no problems on the 12 minute ride over.
Ferry we took from Auckland to Devonport
Devonport is a cute little town that has many old style buildings which is right up my alley. We took a walk along the side of the harbour stopping at various spots along the way while Dad read little blurbs about what we were looking at. We finished our walk at North Head where we had amazing views of the city of Auckland as well as views out towards the sea. Dad really felt like fish and chips for lunch so we stopped at a take-away (I had a cheeseburger - no fish for me!) and ate it on a bench looking at the water. We ended our time there with a two scoop ice-cream and another ferry ride back to Auckland. We walked almost 23,000 steps that day and our bodies really felt it! It was nice to relax in the evening. :-)
Me eating a lamington and Dad eating a brownie from a local bakery in Devonport
Photos of Devonport on our walk
Beautiful architecture
Views from North Head
Kite surfers
Dad beside an old cannon on North Head
Cockatoo in tree on our walk back to town from North Head
Dad eating his fish and chips for lunch
Our view from bench we ate lunch on
More fabulous architecture
Cool tree
Thought this little bike advertizing a business was really cute
Me eating a yummy ice-cream before we got back on the ferry to take us back to Auckland
DAY 1 OF CRUISE - Wednesday, 17 January, 2018
We arrived at the pier around 11:30am and got into the long line-up to register for the cruise. After going through that line-up, we went through security and then were onboard - yay - our cruise was beginning. We went straight up to our room, but found that it was not ready. So, it was off to lunch (carting our carry-on luggage behind us). The buffet (at the Windjammer) had a variety of food for us to choose from: salads, mains and desserts. After eating, our room was now ready to occupy. We ended up with an amazing room - our room has a king-sized bed in it with a couch and a dresser/desk with drawers, a mirror and a chair. There was a large closet as well which easily fit all of our clothes in it. We also had a very large balcony with two chairs and a table - very nice to sit out on and enjoy the scenery from. After we put all of our clothes, etc. in the closet/drawers, we walked around the ship familiarizing ourselves with where everything was. This was only our second time on a Royal Caribbean cruise and it's a very nice ship (Radiance of the Seas).
Dressed up for our first dinner in the main dining room
Our wonderful waiters: Bowie and Randy
After dinner, we headed to the Aurora Theatre where they have the nightly entertainment shows. Tonight's guest was Paul Brasch, a comedian. He was okay - he seemed to struggle with his routine - we figured out later that he was giving an adult show later on that evening and so he probably wasn't used to giving a G rated show. We don't expect much from the entertainment on ships - that way, we are not disappointed.
DAY 2 - Thursday, 18 January, 2018
Today, we were supposed to dock at a port called Bay of Islands - we were looking forward to seeing this port as we have not been there before and a number of people had told us how beautiful it was. However, we didn't get to go there - this port is a tender port meaning that you have to take a lifeboat into the city dock as the water is too shallow there for the ship to dock. The seas were too choppy for the tenders to be used. This is the first time that we have missed a port on a cruise due to bad weather, but it does happen every now and then. We were disappointed not to be able to see the Bay of Islands, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
So, we spent our day relaxing and doing trivia. We love doing the trivia quizzes when we cruise - it's fun to join a group of people and see how much we (don't) know. :-) This cruise we joined up with a couple, Ken and Katherine, from Newcastle and a fellow named Richard from Colorado. We usually did trivia two or three times a day with our group. We had a really fun time with them and won a number of prizes (mostly when there were only a few teams playing :-) Over the time on the cruise, we won two highlighters, two pens, a water bottle and two Royal Caribbean baseball cap - not a bad haul. :-)
Our trivia group: Richard, Katherine, Ken, me, Dad
That night, the entertainment in the Theatre was a stage performer named Chelsea Gibb. She has performed onstage in a number of leading roles in musical theatre (Roxy in 'Chicago' on Broadway, and Anna in 'The King and I' and Sally Bowles in 'Cabaret' in Sydney). She has an amazing voice and we really enjoyed listening to her perform.
DAY 3 - Friday, 19 January, 2018
Our port of call today was Tauranga - we hadn't prebooked any tours on this cruise - we just decided to get off and walk around the town to see what was there. We walked the main street and peeked in a couple of shops. We then climbed a small hill and checked out the view. Then, it was another walk back to the ship. There wasn't much to see here, but it was nice to get off the ship and check out a new town in New Zealand.
Statue of a surfer on a surf board (on our way back to the ship)
That night's entertainment was 'The Groove Line' - this trio performed a variety of Motown funk and soul classic songs. They were an entertaining group and sang a number of songs we knew from that era.
After the evening show, we met up with our trivia group to play the game show 'Majority Rules'. The emcee asks questions and every group writes down an answer and runs that answer up to the front to a scorer. Whichever answer has the most votes is the 'right' answer and if you gave that answer, your team gets a point. They asked questions like 'who is the sexiest man alive' or 'which celebrity did the last cruise think the scorer most looked like' or 'if you could choose one thing to throw overboard, what would it be (most people said 'my spouse' :-) We didn't win, but we had a lot of fun coming up with answers.
DAY 4 - Saturday, 20 January, 2018
Our towel 'buddy' watching tv
Today was an 'at sea' day which meant that we spent the day eating, playing trivia games (three general quizzes, a Scattergories game and a 'where in the world am I? quiz) and relaxing.
After dinner, the show tonight was a magician named Ben Murphy. He involved a couple of members of the audience and was quite entertaining.
DAY 5 - Sunday, 21 January, 2018
Today our port of call was Wellington - its nickname is 'Wet and Windy Wellington' - we had been there before on our cruise in 2009 and we had taken a bus tour at that time. It lived up to its nickname back then, but this time, the weather was kind to us and we had a lovely time walking around the city listening to a downloaded guided walk.
Another part of the Wellington Museum
Cute sign on the wharf
Post Office Square from 1884
There was no show in the Theatre that night - there was going to be a 70's Disco Inferno Dance Party later that night, so the entertainment part of that was a pre-show in the Centrum (central part of the ship which is a seven-storey atrium). The DJ played 70's music while the cruise director staff danced to some of the tunes, including 'YMCA' (dressed as the Village People). There were tons of passengers on all floors of the Centrum dancing and singing to the songs - it was a lot of fun!
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