Auckland, New Zealand

For some reason I had planned three full days in Auckland. After spending the three days, I’d say Auckland’s a really nice place to live, with all sorts of different neighbourhoods and little local cafes and restaurants. There’s a reason why Auckland routinely shows up on best places to live. But as a tourist, it’s not terribly exciting. I’d say the same thing about Toronto. I hardly took any pics either.

We checked out the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland War Memorial Museum and the New Zealand Maritime Museum, and walked around the waterfront and downtown core. The downtown is undergoing some major infrastructure work and is mostly under construction (also similar to Toronto). We used Uber a few times to get in and out of the core; it was pretty reasonable.

We ate at some pretty decent Asian restaurants in Auckland. We also had dinner one night at Freida Margolis, which was a really cool neighbourhood bar. Only later we realized it’s also written up in the Lonely Planet.

Another observation is that Auckland is very car-centric. There is pedestrian infrastructure, but the car is always favoured. Even at what appears to be crosswalks, it’s the car that has the right-of-way.

And that was about it for Auckland.