If my arithmetic is correct, this 16 February and we are 17 hours ahead of Minneapolis, Springfield, Lacona, and Pleasantville, about the same in Mexico and Ecuador; not sure about Tel Aviv or Thailand. We arrived  about 11 in the morning on 15/2 rather than the scheduled 8 on 16/2. That gave us an extra afternoon and evening to explore the downtown a bit.

This is a city, largest in NZ with about 1.5 million, which is one third of the total population. We are the only cruise ship in town so most of the people we see aren’t traveling with us. We are very much on the Pacific Ring of Fire with dozens of volcanos in the area; most extinct, all currently inactive. We will climb one today (by bus) to the most popular city park and museum.

A major advantage of the city’s location is that it has harbors on two oceans, which may be unique in the world. It also has a space needle kind of thing (tall point thing in the right center of the picture that didn’t attach.) They call it “Sky Tower” and includes such attractions as the “Sky Walk” and “Sky Jump”. I may do it alone; we’ll see.

(I just tried to insert a picture but lost everything I’d done in the process. I’ll skip that for the moment; maybe when we get on shore.)

The Mãori call this place “Tãmaki Makaurau,” which translates as “Maiden desired by a hundred lovers.” We like it but that may be overstating it a bit.