Another full day

Another full day in Auckland. Art and I (Nigel stayed home and did work) tooled around town today. First we went to the Chelsea Sugar Refinery. Great grounds. It sits out in the water. We wondered around there for a while and went down one of the paths and came about two incredible houses.

From there we went to Victoria Park Market. It was an old incinerator for rubbish. For awhile there was also a power plant on the premises as well. Now it's a series of shops. They run the gamut from selling well for lack of a better work junk to t-shirts, sweaters (called jumpers or jerseys here), Maori carvings to pictures of the city. It had a really great mix of stores.

Then we went to Parnell which is sort of the Georgetown on Auckland. Nice mix of stores at the high end of the price scale and lots of places to eat. For lunch I had scrambled eggs with salon and toast. They were really great. We also did a little shopping more looking than anything else. I've got some ideas for what to get people but want to look around before making any purchases. We stopped off at Starbucks. I got a hot chocolate and Art a coffee.

Next we went to a series of parks or domains as they are called here to get all sorts of different views of the city and harbor. One was under the Auckland Harbor bridge. The other were the Viaduct Basin, Kauri Point Domain, Island Bay and Beach Haven. Just incredible. The water is so beautiful. It was rather windy today and waved were really whipped up. It was low tide so we were able to walk a long way out. Saw a starfish which was waiting for high tide to come. Also several kayakers and wind surfers. The wind surfers really moved when they caught the wind.

Tonight I'm going to get to see the Southern Cross and the skyline at night.