31st August 2016

Auckland Mostly sunny Temp 18c.

We docked right on time at 10am. As we were not going far we did not rush to get off. The ship docked right at the end of Queen St which is the main shopping street so you can literally walk straight of the ship into the town. We got off armed with our iPads and looked for a Starbucks to check out their WiFi in preparation with later in the day when we were going to try to speak on Facetime with Zara & Tanya (Cheryl does not have Facetime). We tried Zara first but she was not home. We then tried to do some updates of our programs however their WiFi was as bad as the ship’s. I should say we actually first had coffee at the Coffee Club using our club card and did use their WiFi but they have a very tight time limit on the use which did not suit us. Eventually we decided to have lunch and saw a Subway which was in the foyer of the railway station. There was plenty of seats around and they had their own WiFi which turned out to be very good and not many people using it. By this time Zara had received our message and told us that she was now home and available. We had a really good conversation with her talking about arrangements for our meeting on Sunday next in Sydney. We knew Tanya was not available until later so we then went back to the ship after we had walked up and down Queens St. Incidentally we noticed that Auckland seems not to have a decent department store at present. The shopping centre which we remember has been knocked down and they are building an underground station on the site. Later on, about 6pm Auckland time we went out again this time we went straight to the station and had another good conversation this time with Tanya. Back on the ship our evening entertainment was a concert by Darren Bethell and the ship’s band. Darren you may remember is the guy who plays piano each night in the Atrium where we sometimes have hot chocolates while listening to him. He put on a good show and surprised us by including his wife Cassie who plays the Violin and does it very well. The songs they did together included “The Devil went down to Georgia” which if you know it has some fast violin parts. We sailed at 10pm bound for the Bay of Islands which is not far away.