Nikki and I headed out early Monday morning. We needed to do a few things first and then were heading to the Sky Tower, highest structure in the Southern Hemisphere, located partway between the dock and Scotia Place where the church is and about two blocks east of Queen Street. After that we would part ways with Nikki going to the Aquarium/Antarctica Exhibit and me going to purchase periodicals for the LRC. I had finally managed to catch up with TSS’s “money person” and get cash in the form of US Dollars with which to make the purchases.
First we went to the post office so Nikki could mail a box of summer-weight clothing she no longer needed since we are headed into cooler and then cold weather and to make room for all of the souvenirs she has been and will be buying. Then we stopped at a money exchange place where I changed the US Dollars into NZ Dollars. Then we headed up Queen Street to Borders bookstore to pick up some free booklets of Maori expressions that I’d found there during my visit on Saturday. Then we went back down Queen Street to the street the Sky Tower is on, turned left and walked the couple of blocks – UPHILL! – to our destination.
I forgot to take a picture of the Sky Tower but it is slender and circular. We went inside a building next to the tower and were directed to the basement, which held the ticket booth. We showed our TSS ID cards and were given a significant discount on the admission price. We chose to go only as far as the Observation Deck and not pay the extra $3 to go the additional nine stories to the very top of the tower. It was a good thing we didn’t because when I first got onto the deck, which is completely enclosed with glass walls, I had the sensation of falling (is that called vertigo?). I stayed away from the perimeter on the solid wood floor two steps above the outer walkway, which included windows allowing a view downward. I never did look through them and chose not to walk on any of them.
For a while I just walked around, looking at the panoramic view from ten feet away form the glass walls. Eventually, however, I realized that I could get up close to the walls and place my camera against them to take pictures without the falling sensation. Then I went most of the way around the outer deck taking photos. Some of the best shots are below.
Across the harbor 8857
Industrial area with bridge in the background 8860
Over the tops of skyscrapers to islands in the harbor and volcano beyond 8862
Across the city 8863
Park with green trees and residential area beyond (note sky diving cable on far left, going from top to bottom of the photo) 8864
Hill beyond city center 8866
TSS barely visible beyond building to the right of ANZ tower 8869
Nearby skyscraper 8871
View of town center with giant Santa figure on Whitcoull’s bookstore 8872
While I was sitting on a bench talking to Nikki, suddenly a sky diver went past, going down from the top of the Sky Tower. He was stretched out flat like Superman and had a huge grin on his face. I held up my camera and tried to get it to turn on and focus so I could take a picture of it but it is the slowest camera on earth and he was out of sight before I could get a shot. A few minutes later another diver, a female looking scared stiff went past, stiff as a board and completely upright. I barely managed to get the camera to take a shot before she was out of sight.
Skydiver going down, down, down 8873
Target for Sky Tower skydivers, way down below 8876
Buveh inside Sky Tower (no flash, so I had to bleach it out to get me to show up) 8868
When we had seen enough, including the exhibits that included hands-on maneuvering of livecam scenes to zoom in or out on various areas of the city, we took the glass elevator to the basement. Once back out on the street, Nikki went to catch the special shuttle for the aquarium and I walked downhill back to Queen Street to Whitcoull’s to start buying newspapers and magazines for the LRC. When I had spent nearly all the allotted money, I headed back to TSS for lunch. After lunch I went all the way back up Queen Street to Borders to spend the last bit of money and ended up overspending, on a single item. A copy of Foreign Affairs, air freighted, cost NZ$39.99.
Finally, I headed back down Queen Street to the Internet Café I’d worked in on Saturday and spent until dinner time, uploading photos to my various blog postings. I ended up taking all of them offline because Blogger puts all uploaded photos at the top of the blog, where they have to be manually moved to their correct location and cannot be cut and pasted. I was there for several hours and only got through about half of the entries because uploading was rather slow (5 photos at a time) and because moving them took so much time. Then I rushed back to TSS to be there by 7:00 to meet Nikki and Nancy for dinner out, to celebrate our last full night in Auckland.
We went to a restaurant just across the street from our dock. I had asparagus salad and “chips” (French fries), both of which were delicious. The one strange thing about the salad was that it was served with a poached egg on top! Because the yolk was runny I didn’t eat it, just pushed it to one side. I like poached eggs, if the yolk is solid. The next night at dinner on TSS as we were preparing to sail, the menu included “Kiwi (i.e. NZ) hamburgers. Can you guess? It was a hamburger patty topped by a poached egg! Fortunately the yolks were solid so I tried one and to my utter amazement, it was absolutely delicious! I guess those Kiwis (and New Zealanders call themselves) know what they’re about by topping everything with poached eggs.
After dinner we headed directly back to the ship.
Last Day in Auckland: Tuesday 13 November 2007
My plan for this day was to spend the entire day at the Internet Café, trying to upload all of the photos to all remaining blog entries but I didn’t get away as soon as I’d hoped (7:00) so I didn’t arrive there until about 9:00. I worked until lunchtime, went back to TSS for lunch, stopped in my room to do a few computer things and save them to my flash drive to take back to the Internet Café, then went there and spent until nearly time to board TSS for departure. The designated time to be aboard was 8:00 PM and I left the Internet Café at about ten before sever.
I wanted to go to a souvenir shop and get a particular item for a gift for a particular grandson and to try to spend my remaining New Zealand dollars. Only souvenir shops were open since most retail establishments close by 5:00 or 5:30. I went in the one closest to the IC but things were supremely expensive; glanced in another but it was all really touristy stuff and finally crossed the street and found one I liked. There I managed to literally spend all my money. I don’t even have a souvenir New Zealand coin left to add to my collection!
Then I hurried down the last block of Queen Street to Quay Street, crossed to the harbor side and entered TSS’s dock, for the last time going past the NZ Customs folks to whom I had to show my TSS ID card and open purse and bags for inspection. We were forbidden by NZ law to take off of or bring onto the ship any agricultural products of any kind (fruit, veges, flowers, seeds, plants, opened bottled water, etc.), then walked down the length of the dock one last time, showed my ID to yet another NZ Customs official, mounted the TSS gangway and entered our screening area, going through an airport-type entry and handed my ID to the TSS security person, who scanned it through the system, waited for my (horrible) photo to show on the computer screen while he checked the accompanying data to be sure I was still authorized to board the ship. Then I walked three steps to the hand sanitizer dispenser (recommended by the National Institutes of Health and sanitized by hands. The entry/exit point was on Coral Deck, so I then walked straight into the dining room and went through the buffet line to get my dinner that included the previously-mentioned Kiwi hamburger.
Later, TSS got underway. We had been warned about rough seas and I took a few photos Through My Porthole. Weary after seven days pounding the pavements of Auckland, I was reading and relaxing in my cabin when I got a phone call asking me to come to the Reception Desk on Aloha Deck to be briefed by the Head of Housekeeping on preparing the LRC for rough weather. I have no idea where Grete was or why she was not the one summoned. However, I went, listened and then headed for the LRC, where I spent about an hour moving reserve books to secure shelves, DVD cases into cabinets with doors, placing the staff computer components on the floor, taping down the mousse of the other computers and placing anything else that could sail off a counter or table either onto the floor or into a cabinet with doors.
After that, I finally got to go to my room, wavering and wobbling as the ship hit the open seas and began pitching and rolling. It was a fairly rough night but not as bad as the two that followed. It wasn’t until the third day at sea that the waters grew calmer and more people emerged from their cabins, where they had been confined because of seasickness. Fortunately, although a felt a bit queasy at times during the worst of it, I was able to work, eat and keep up with my usual routine.
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