March 14. Auckland, Day 1.

Picking up right where we left off... It took us less than a half hour to get through passport control, immigration, and get our bags.

We were looking at Uber prices to our hotel, but decided on a cab. We've had previous incidents with Uber drivers in foreign lands not liking our baggage amounts with their small vehicles and there weren't any larger Ubers even offered. 

Our cab driver Richard had way more energy than we did for 6:30am in the morning. He told us not to take any more cabs once our bags were in our hotel room... "Get an Uber, they're so cheap and easy". He was an interesting fellow, giving us an education on himself (from Fiji, has lived here 30 years,) and New Zealand. Like many similar encounters during our travels, he wanted to talk to us about America... And the crazy health care system and guns. 

After about a half hour we arrived at our hotel, Cordis Auckland. I found it through American Express travel. One of our credit cards gives a $200 credit, plus a bunch of benefits, so it seemed like a great deal. The person at the front desk, Ve, was super helpful and thankfully got us a room right away at 7am. It was so fantastic to shower and just dump all our bags in the room after our 26.5 hours of travel. 

When going through huge time changes, it's always recommended to try to stay awake and get on the destination time as soon as possible to minimize jet lag. Cab driver Richard gave us a lot of recommendations for things to do all day to keep busy. We started our walking tour of Queen Street, the main artery of town. It is like most large city downtown areas with lots of shopping, food and tourist trap options. 

Richard recommended getting a ferry to Waiheke Island. We decided to go for it and got a ferry and hop-on hop-off bus package. It was SO WORTH IT!!! The 45 minute ferry ride away from Auckland and around the nearby islands was very scenic, and we didn't know the island had 25 or so vineyards. So it turned into a vineyard touring, wine tasting day. 

We started with lunch at "The Local" overlooking the beautiful blue water and beaches. Fish and Chips is a local specialty, made with battered red snapper. Haven't had that before, but it was delicious. 

Then we made our way to three wineries, each very unique. 

Stony Ridge - This was the most generic, "pump people through" of the three. They just threw down the wines on the placement that had one sentence descriptions on it... None of them were that amazing, not even the $400 bottle we tasted. Someone we met at the next place said this was the place celebrities go, and Britney Spears has gone here... People are so random.

Te Motu - Most hip, laid back and fun of the three. Great Rosé, which I don't usually like called "The Shed" after the sheep and goat shed that they turned into the tasting area and outdoor veranda. It was also the first time we did vertical tasting, trying 2004, 2014, and 2019 vintages of the same wine. I liked the oldest. Kory said it tasted like dirt. He liked the most recent.

Mudbrick - Passionate people in a beautiful setting overlooking the bay and Auckland off in the distance. The people in the tasting room were so happy to share their knowledge and ask us questions. We stayed for a glass of each of our favorite from the tasting to soak up the ambiance and sun.

After about seven hours on the island we took the ferry back to Auckland, hiked back up the hill to our hotel and headed to dinner at one of the restaurants in our hotel, "Our Land Is Alive". More fancy drinks! I had "Lost at Ourland" (the bubble drink) and Kory had the "Lychee Rose Martini". They were both delicious and we were happy with our selections.

After we finished dinner we congratulate each other on staying awake all day, waking 16,000 steps and agreed we'd sleep in tomorrow.