Honeymoon Day 1 - Arrival and Auckland


Welcome to our newly minted travel blog! Our first stop is of course New Zealand, from which we arrived home a few weeks ago. While New Zealand is a pain in the butt to get to, it was certainly worth it, and made for a phenomenal honeymoon. We began our trip around 6:30 Friday night, with a nice sunset out the window of the plane at RDU. We had ahead of us a 6 hour flight to Los Angeles, and from there another 13 hour flight to Auckland, NZ.

Though 13 hours is a long time to spend in any plane, we were fortunate at least to get to spend it in one of Boeing's newest planes, the 787 Dreamliner. We noticed almost immediately how much quieter the Dreamliner is, which apparently is due to a number of things including the plane being made out of composite rather than metal, and the shape of the engines, which allows for a quieter plane overall. Another interesting feature that we didn't notice right away (to our credit it was 2AM Raleigh time when we boarded the flight) were the dimming windows. The 787 has no window shades, but instead has windows that tint, which they use to make artificial night on long hauls when there shouldn't be. We didn't notice until most of the way through the flight when the orb that might have been the moon was just way too bright to possibly be the moon. Spoiler: it was the sun.

We finally made it to Auckland, and were greeted by a beautiful Maori carving in the airport. A much nicer arrival than basically anywhere I've yet to go. They also had some awesome Lord of the Rings statues right there in the rental car/arrival plaza, complete with signs saying "On Loan from Middle Earth, do not touch".




Eventually, we got our rental car, reminded ourselves to KEEP LEFT on the roads, and headed into downtown Auckland to find our hotel. The driving wasn't as bad as I had feared - I only made a tight right turn a couple of times, and no one was coming anyway. Much more often I attempted to use the turn signal and instead activated the windshield wipers, because for some reason they are on opposite sides of the steering column. We figured if someone turned without signaling but was wiping their windshield on a sunny day, they probably get a pass as a fellow tourist. 

We were too early to check into the hotel but they did mercifully give us keys to the gym area where we could shower and change out of our airplane attire. Then it was time to head out on foot to find lunch and enjoy the new city!

Auckland is an interesting city, kind of a mix of modern European/American and Asian city feel. Down by the water it reminded me a bit of San Francisco, with a few historic buildings and lots of boats. We had a nice lunch at a harbor-side restaurant, and then checked out the maritime museum. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Behind us in this first picture is the Sky Tower, which is apparently the tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere.


The maritime museum was super cool, and featured some local crafts like the woven tapestry below, made from some kind of dyed plant, probably flax, as there seems to be a lot of that in NZ. It also had boats ranging from primitive wooden boats, to carved canoes, to modern yachts like the one that won the America's Cup! The Maritime industry is extremely important to New Zealand, and always has been, because it is such a mountainous terrain that it's just easier to ship things around by boat than it is to attempt to carry or even truck them across the mountains. 




Once we had our fill of boats, it was about check in time, so we made our way back to the hotel, by way of a city park that was having some kind of local music/art festival, and attempted to stay awake until a somewhat reasonable time. After a room service dinner (hey, it was our honeymoon right?) we crashed at the super late... 7pm-ish?

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