Surprise! Extra Day in Auckland

Original plan:

• Arrive in Auckland on Thursday night (local time)
• See Hobbiton on Friday
• Fly to Christchurch on Saturday. Spend as little time in the city as possible.
• 

Actual events:

• Arrive in Auckland on Wednesday
• Not realize the date disparity until we get to the hostel at 1 am
• Find out said hostel has no beds available
• Walk down the block to another hostel who does have beds
• Feel really bad about walking in at 1 am
• Feel like we’re dying because the room is so hot
• Leave to find water which kind of annoyed our roommates
• Finally get to bed
• Wake up the next morning with no plan for the day.

After wandering in search of brekkie (the kiwi term for the morning meal), we got back to our hostel and consulted a bulletin board showing things to do in Auckland. It was a bit awkward because someone was sitting right under the bulletin board, charging their phone. As we threw out ideas, he looked up at us.

“Are you guys trying to find something to do today?”

We explained our plight.

“Well, I’m going to walk to Mt. Eden and then go to the museum. Wanna join?”

Sure thing! So we spent the day with our new tour guide, Alex. He’s living in Chicago and working with the government to fix the crime rates there, and so it was a super interesting conversation. Did you know that you can look at someone’s vocabulary in third grade and get a pretty good idea of whether they will end up in jail? Or that poor kids in Chicago almost never get silence, so when they start spending half an hour in a silent room, their learning improves? Not that that has anything to do with this blog, but it was still interesting stuff.

Mt Eden is one of 30 or 40 volcanic cones in the middle of Auckland. We got a beautiful view of the city, then walked across a cricket field to the Auckland War Museum. Which was awesome.

After, we had some subpar but very cheap pizza and parted ways with our guide. After a rest, I went to the bookstore and was surprised to find so many titles about American politics, most of them negative.

All in all, I enjoyed our extra day in Auckland.