Day 2 in NZ

Today is Sunday and we had a free day to tour Auckland and whatever we wanted to. I went running this morning with some girls and did a little workout with them at the park. Afterwards we came back, had breakfast, and headed out the door for down town Auckland. I had googled to see where a church was so that I could go for a while but i couldn't find it while we were out today so I didn't end up going. It rained for a while but most of the day was nice. I was able to figure out my calling card and I talked to Dallen for a few minutes which was a highlight!


Below on the left is a preschool for young children, and on the right is just an old building that I thought looked cool.


We went to the sky tower which was really cool and walked around some streets to check things out. At the sky tower there was a cool "Shark Bus" that I wanted to ride in but we didn't.



I had lunch with a little group and tried out a chicken and rice chilli plate which was good. After lunch we found our way to a museum they have here. It was pretty interesting and had a lot of information about the Mauri and the culture that NZ has.


These are some of the 'ships' and sail boats that the Mauri came across the ocean on to New Zealand.


This is an example of one of New Zealand's largest tree. In the picture, the tree is only half the size of what they grow to be. I also thought the chair made from a whale back bone was pretty neat.

New Zealand is famous for its birdlife so there were a lot of bird exhibits. They are especially known for the Kiwi Bird which is a flightless bird that doesn't have any wings. They believe that it became this way because there aren't any predators and it got use to walking on the ground without any worries and morphed into a bird without wings.


I was amazed with this bird below called the Moa. It is now extinct because of hunters that killed if off but was said to be very good for meat and clothing/protection. We were told that at one time there was a eagle that had a 9ft. wing spread that could pick up the Moa and eat it. Pretty fascinating if you ask me!


The Mauri exhibits were really interesting and I was amazed at the talent they had in their artwork and carvings. They have a lot of legends of Gods and Goddesses and have a symbol or a carving for each one of them which were all displayed.


We wandered the streets for quite some time and took a couple wrong busses and got lost for a while. I bet we walked many miles just exploring and trying to figure out our way back to the house which we eventually found. It was cool to see the city. There are a lot more Asians and Japanese things in town than I expected I was amazed at all of the shops. It seemed that there were no living places in the city except for apartments and the streets were completely lined with shops and businesses.

It was kind of funny though because each street we came upon seemed to have a starbucks and a subway. There were a lot of those! They have a lot of U.S. restaurants like Denny's, Mc Donands, Wendy's, Subway, Pizza Hut, and more. I'm surprised that all the shops can stay in business because there are so many that are so similar and so close together. We passed by a "Toys R Fun" which in America is "Toys R Us".

Just an interesting side note: The traffic and everything is backwards here. They drive on the left side of the street and the drivers side in the cars on the right side instead of the left. Also all of the door knobs are either super high or super low in the houses and the toilets have a full flush and a half flush. I guess one is for pee and one for the other. lol It was just really different to anything that I've ever seen before. Another one that is weird to get use to is that the light switches are opposite. To turn the light on you have to flip the switch down and off is up. They also call counter tops benches. That's just some of the trivia I've learned so far :)