We had about 5 days in Christchurch before heading to Auckland on the North Island for a conference that Mike was attending and presenting at. Auckland is the largest city in NZ with about a quarter of the entire country's 4 million population. It is a pretty city, with water everywhere around it, and harbors in two different oceans. On the East is the Pacific Ocean, and on the West is the Tasman Sea. There is an Ocean-to-Ocean walking path that is about 8 miles long. We managed to do most of it one day but never did get all the way to the Tasman side.
The picture above is the view from our hotel, looking at the Pacific harbor area. We saw a constant stream of sailboats, ferrys, and large cruise ships every day during Happy Hour in the room.
Auckland has a lot of green spaces in it, with lots of interesting trees in them. This is in a small park near our hotel.
Out hotel was also located near a park that had a great Chinese Lantern Festival. The festival is held every year on the first full moon following Chinese New Year. On display were about 1000 lanterns of all sizes and in all images: people, animals, tea pots, etc. We took a lot of pictures that night--here's two of them.
The conference kept Mike busy, and Terry attended a bit to see old friends, so we didn't get too far from the hotel, except for one excursion to Devonshire, an island in Auckland Harbor that has some nice Victorian homes and some of the biggest trees we saw in the whole city.
We have been back in Christchurch for about 10 days, and will catch up on the blog since we have now figured out the picture uploading process. Look for more soon.
Mike & Terry
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