Day 64 - ... Come to an End

Friday, December 6th, 2013

Our very last day and we planned to make the most of it. We packed up ready for our evening flight and left our bags at the hotel. 

We walked the 15 minute route to the quay to catch the 'Hop-on Hop-off' tour bus that promises stops at Auckland's 14 most famous sights. How disappointed we were to see not one, but two, cruise ships in for the day! Fortunately, extra buses had been organized to accommodate increased volume, so our experience was fine.

The first picture here is of the Auckland city skyline taken from our first stop at Marine World.  Auckland has the highest rate of boat ownership of any city in the world.

We changed buses at the museum to do an outer loop and hopped off at Mount Eden where other passengers climbed another 300 meters to view the city under blue skies! We, on the other hand, were still on a mission to find that passionfruit pulp. We headed down Mount Eden and, only a 15 -20 minute walk away, found the distributor we'd been looking for ever since the shopkeeper in Taihape told us about it. We enjoyed browsing the fine imported foods in this place - Sabados - hidden in an industrial head office area of the city. We found the 'Fresh As' brand of freeze-dried sliced and powdered fruits and picked some up - passionfruit for me and feijoa to take home for Kyla.

Shopping done, we headed to Eden Gardens, another Hop-on-off bus stop, and continued the sight-seeing route until Parnell Village area caught our attention as a good stop to find a late lunch. 

Following lunch and more browsing, we discovered that it would be quicker to walk back to our hotel than to wait for the bus and see the remaining 2 sights. 

Back at our hotel we relaxed with a beer before our shuttle collected us for the airport. We'll have a 13.5 hour flight leaving at 8 PM Friday evening, arriving in Vancouver at 12 PM Friday noon!

Tina and I will part ways at Vancouver. I'm off to my brother Ken's place for a couple of days and then to Kyla's for a couple more days' visit before heading home. Both Ken and Kyla and their families have moved into new homes since I've been away, so I'm looking forward to checking out a couple of new-to-me neighbourhoods.