Relaxing day in port

Day 10   Friday, March 22, 2019   Auckland

Kia ora! With the Sky Tower in the background that we would be ascending on our Gate 1 tour, we walked around a little and got some free wifi, but spent most of the day onboard the Majestic right there at the downtown dock.

It was a late arrival - 9:30 by the time we could go ashore, but I was in the Fitness Room by 6:45 watching us pass many little islands on our approach from the north through Rangitoto Channel. Once back in the room, we watched the TV to see the scenery ahead as we approached the Auckland skyline. In the photo above, we were eating our buffet breakfast outside on 16 aft. Another beautiful morning!

 It was interesting to watch them pull the heavy lines to attach to the pier cleats. A long light rope was attached to the heavy line, and once they had the rope, they used the power capstan on the back of that truck to wrap the rope to pull up the heavy ship line.

Our pier was right at the downtown. To disembark the ship, we had to walk through the Hilton Hotel on the pier. It was a long trek to get off the pier, but once we did, we had the above view of Auckland.

To get across the wide Quay Street, we had to get around lots of construction and blocked areas. That's the Ferry Building, and we would depart from there on our Gate 1 visit in 12 more days, to visit wineries on Waiheke Island.

Once across Quay St., we walked up the main boulevard, Queen St., to look in stores and search for free wifi. We had no excursions on this day because, as with the day before, anything that sounded interesting we would be doing later with Gate 1. In the photo above, I thought the Trike Tours open motorcycle looked cool, but so did the old Craig's Building across the street.

We found an interesting souvenir shop that was loaded with Māori wood-carving pieces (Kia Ora!). I loved this waka, and ended up buying a small version of it. The wood used to make my waka was 4500 yrs old, from a Kauri swamp-log. (We had learned about Kauri trees during one of Dave Upton's lectures. They are massive trees, and found in the top half of the North Island. Kauri forests are among the most ancient in the world. Trees can normally live longer than 600 years, and many individuals exceed 1000 years. Even logs lying in bogs over the millennia remain intact, allowing for such carvings from ancient wood.)

Lots of carved choices in the store. These were only a few of them. They securely wrapped up my waka for protection through 26 more days of travel, including seven flights!

We found a nice sidewalk sports pub for lunch.

This slate on their window listed all the live sporting events they would be showing over the weekend. Most were for rugby and soccer, but the NCAA March Madness was also up there. In the bottom right, it says "Live and Loud." Ha!

After lunch, we continued up Queen St. to a McDonalds for some free wifi time. As always, the people near us were always friendly and wanted to know where we were from, etc. After our 30 minutes, we wandered back to the port to see the National Maritime Museum a few yards from our ship.

We intended to visit the maritime museum, but it was way too expensive. Just outside the door was this hull from one of NZ's America's Cup sailing boats. Team New Zealand was world famous for winning the America's Cup in 1995, 2000, and its come-from-behind miracle win in 2017.

My last photo of the day before spending the rest of the day onboard. We just wandered a little while along the docks.

As soon as we stepped onboard, we sat down and had lunch at Alfredo's Pizzeria. We spent leisure time at the pool, then napped. Janet spent lots of time trying to telephone Bob Speers, her camp-counselor friend from the early 70s who lives somewhere in Auckland. Back in our room, we watched the recorded Dave Upton presentation on Bay of Islands.

We listened to some music, had the buffet dinner, and then at 7 pm in the theater we watched a very cool Māori cultural presentation titled "Haka the Legend." There were about 10 Māori demonstrating all sorts of dances with singing, weapon handling, waiata poi shows (balls on string), and a form of group-juggling with carved sticks. A narrator explained everything clearly, so this was an enjoyable and educational show!

We watched the live simulcast of the theater comedian in the Princess Live! room, but we didn't enjoy him so much.

The ship departed late, at 9:00, so we did have some scenery leaving the lighted skyscrapers of Auckland behind.