welcome relief from the awful beer! It was then time to head back home for a good nights sleep before a hectic day’s sightseeing.

We ended up having a fairly chilly morning and going into the city around lunch time. It was a lovely sunny day and we walked down through Parnell park into the city, it was a beautiful park with some great views over the city. We were instantly impressed with Auckland, the harbour area was fabulous and the whole city had a really good vibe. There harbour was filled with a whole variety of different boats of all shapes and sizes, in fact Auckland has more boats per person than any other city in the world! We checked out boat trips for around the harbour and decided to go on an early one the next day. We then walked up to the sky tower which looked mightily impressive and had a host of daredevil ways of either leaping off it or reverse bungee jumping up it. Neither

of us were keen to try out either of these activities so decided to give them a wide berth! We wandered round for a little longer before we were starting to get hungry so decided to check out food options and believe me there was a vast selection! The restaurants ranged from cheap cafes to really expensive places so we ended up in a Turkish café which served us up a great and to Rob’s delight a large portioned meal! After this we headed back to the hostel via the local office license as we thought it only right to sample a bottle of New Zealand red.

We were up and out early as we wanted to get the 10.30 boat trip. One of the many great things about our hostel was that the local bakery donated all of its unused bread, so each morning there was a great selection of free bread. We thought this was a great idea and also a good marketing ploy for the bakery as the bread was absolutely delicious,