Auckland Arrival

We left from Seattle at 3:20PM, flew into San Francisco and immediately left for a 13 hour flight to Auckland, NZ. I (Andrew) watched 7 movies on the flight. They had all three Lord of the Rings available, but I already watch them back to back to back earliar this year, so I had to settle for some lesser known titles. I think Nicole watched a couple and got a few hours of sleep.

We landed in Auckland at about 5Am local time. After stumbling around the airport for a couple hours we finally caught a bus into the city. While Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand, it feels smaller than Portland, OR. We found a hostel downtown, but the room wasn't availble for a couple hours so we wandered around the streets. It was quiet when we started - still about 6am at that point - but livened up after a few hours. I was only almost hit once. We were warned that the drivers weren't exactly pedestrian freindly in the city, but had to learn the hard way that I may as well have a target painted on my chest.

The picture above is from Victoria Park in Auckland. Personally, I think it is amazing that Nicole was able to lift me off the ground. We strolled through a market and some random stores waiting for our room. We're planning on hanging out in town tonight and then heading out in the morning with a rental car that we arranged at the hostel. Everything is going well so far, but we both agree that it feels disturbingly similar to the port calls we had in the Navy. We both feel exhausted from the plane flight and we're wandering around a somewhat large port city that seems foreign and yet similar (plenty of Burger Kings and Starbucks). We're hoping a good night sleep and some adventure tommorrow will break the spell.