Down Under 3/4/14 - Harbor town, Maritime museum - Auckland, New Zealand

The Sofitel hotel is right on the harbor and that night we enjoy a nice walk ogling all the yachts and then dinner at a restaurant close to the water.  http://www.sofitel.com/gb/hotel-8577-sofitel-auckland-viaduct-harbour/index.shtml

Pool inside the lobby

This hotel had a shallow pool inside the lobby that you could easily walk into...we wondered how many drunks stumbled into it.

The next day we are up for breakfast at the Pita Pit across the street where Anne & I share a breakfast pita.  There is a local girl who engages us in conversation and tells us how she is going to travel to the US to visit Los Angeles and Las Vegas!

Becky takes a rest day in the room, still fighting off the severe cold that seems to be passing from one person to another.

We head for the harbor again and this time we spy what looks like a small maritime museum so we head in to check it out…it turns out this is place is quite a gem and much larger than it appeared. 

Voyager, the New Zealand Maritime Museum is very well funded. http://www.maritimemuseum.co.nz/ 

We have a docent named Greta who emigrated here from the UK 50 years ago.  Greta definitely had an idea for a museum pace and she pushed us along...at her pace.  Some of us wandered away but Anne was the good tourist and stuck with Greta consistently.

The museum presents a maritime history starting with the Maori progressing thru the Dutch, French, British with a variety of real artifacts, models and the history of emigration to New Zealand…for instance there are some cool recreations of ship holds showing the living conditions of the passengers. 

 

Then the museum changes focus to famous NZ captains who competed in the various Americas Cup challenges and Peter Blake in particular…he seems to be revered here and for good reason.  

An Americas Cup winner

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Blake_(yachtsman)

We have lunch next to the water.  The afternoon is spent walking around the city visiting some parks, the old synagogue and a university.  One cool thing about this place…whenever we stopped to look at our map a local would stop and offer to help…and I mean every time we stopped.  It's quite unusual to be in a place where people don't avoid eye contact and reach out to help.

We decide to have a light dinner in the hotel and turn in early as we have to leave the hotel at 3:55AM the next morning to catch our plane to Melbourne, Australia.  These early mornings are killers and really impact the day.