Before we flew back to Norway for our 5 month winter break, we treated ourselves to a long weekend in the big city. We ordered an Uber in Whangarei, which took us for the 2+ hour drive to Auckland.
We played tourists, and got an AirBnb apartment in one of the high rises downtown. We enjoyed the beautiful view of the bay, and planned our activities over the next couple of days.
We were looking forward to enjoying some good restaurant meals and some cultural activities. We started out exploring downtown, which was right outside our doorstep.
Like real tourists, we visited The War Memorial Museum, which had exhibitions that covered everything New Zealand, really, not only its war related history.
Since we hadn’t yet gotten around to visit any New Zeland vineyards since we arrived, we decided to take the ferry out to Waiheke island for a day’s excursion. On the ferry, we actually bumped into a Norwegian family, who was vacationing and picking up their daughter after her studies in New Zealand. Again, a proof that it’s a small world!
We rented e-bikes, and the captain was almost prohibited to cycle on the island, after failing his “showing-I-can-bike” test we were put through before we were allowed to leave the rental office on the docks. He went on the wrong side of the street during the test… They drive on the left side of the road here, which is easily forgotten.
Finally we were off for a full day cycling around the west side of Waiheke, and we quickly discovered this island has all the charm of a vacation destination, with a good mixture of locals and tourists. We were happy we weren’t there mid-summer season, as we imagined it could easily get a little too touristy for our taste.
We enjoyed stops at several charming vineyards, with wine tastings, as well as a brewery, where we also tasted some local beers. As we experienced when we went wine tasting in South Africa, we really enjoy new world wines. However, we think we like the New Zealand whites better than the reds, which tend to be a little too fruity for our taste.
We returned happy and joyous back to the city, where we enjoyed a last day wandering around in quaint neighborhoods and eating yummy food.
The next day, we started our long travel back home, via Dubai. The travel took about 30 hours, and when we landed, we still had to drive for another 2.5 – 3 hours to get to our place in the Norwegian mountains. We looked forward to going home, but also left New Zealand feeling we still had tons to explore.
