So, as I’m sure some of you know already, for the first twelve days of September I went travelling in New Zealand. It was my very first overseas trip and I loved every second of it. When I asked if you would be interested in a blog post about my time there, a lot of you said yes, so here is part one!
I’ve decided to split it into four parts and discuss the four cities I stayed in throughout four blog posts. Since we were there for more than a week and I have lots of things to share, I figured that’d be the best way to do it!
Auckland
Auckland was the very first stop on our trip.
I, along with my parents, flew out of Sydney International Airport on the morning of September 1st and landed in Auckland later that afternoon. New Zealand is luckily only two hours ahead of Australia, so getting used to the time difference was really easy and I barely even noticed that there was a difference.
As it was my first time on a plane, I was a little nervous, but I actually ended up loving the experience. I watched part of Solo: A Star Wars Story on the plane and looked out the window for a lot of it. I had nothing to fear and it turns out I actually kind of love flying.
When we arrived in Auckland, and after we’d gone through security and gotten our bags, we picked up our rental car and then drove to the place we were staying in the city. I’d rather not share exactly where we stayed, but it was nice enough and was pretty close to most things in the city which was great.
We weren’t in Auckland for long, but we did manage to fit in a lot in the time we had. As we only arrived on Saturday night, we didn’t do much that evening except get settled in at our hotel and have a wander around the surrounding area. We had some dinner and sort of just wandered around to see what we were near and what we could possibly have a look at while we were going to be in Auckland.
The real fun comes in on the second day. It was a bit of a cloudy and rainy day, which I love, but it did make it a bit hard for actual sightseeing and exploring. Nevertheless, we managed to get around.
We had breakfast at The Coffee Club and I had pancakes with caramelised banana. They were really nice, but also so filling and I actually couldn’t eat them all because of how huge the pancakes were (and also, who puts popcorn on pancakes…? very strange.)
After that, we had a wander around the shops around us. There weren’t too many shops open because it was a Sunday morning, but we still found some that were. I got some things from Lush and we looked around other shops, too.
Around midday we headed over to the SkyTower. I’m afraid of heights, but I still wanted to experience the SkyTower and I didn’t regret it one bit. The lighting wasn’t great, so my pictures look a little cloudy and blue, but they’re still very pretty. The view was amazing despite the bad weather and it was really nice to go up there and have a look at Auckland. What I didn’t like about the SkyTower, though, was when you go up to the highest level you can, you could literally feel the tower moving a little in the wind. I couldn’t stay up the top very long after that because of how uncomfortable I felt!
Overall, though, I did very much like the SkyTower. It was very pretty and the views were lovely. I’d love to go back one day and see it all on a better, more sunny day.
After the SkyTower, we headed out, grabbed some lunch and headed down to the wharf for a walk around. This was when it started raining, so we hung out under an umbrella for a while and tried to keep our lunch away from the birds that were hanging around.
We wandered around for a little more after that and then headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit and see where we could possibly go for dinner. As it was Father’s Day, I had plans for how we were going to spend the night, but I left dinner up to my parents!
Later, after we’d relaxed for a bit we headed back out into the city. For a Sunday night, it was pretty busy, but it was still lovely. We headed over to Nandos for dinner, which was really nice, and then headed into SkyWorld and got some ice-cream for dessert. I got a sundae with cookies and cream, white chocolate and raspberry and hokey pokey and it was incredible. Honestly, I’m still dreaming about it.
My plan for the night was a complete surprise to my parents – it was going to see Mission: Impossible – Fallout in IMAX. Because the only IMAX cinema in Australia is in Melbourne, and I’m not from there, I figured I’d take the chance to see Fallout in IMAX when I could, and simultaneously treat my dad (and my mum) to a night out. Right now, Fallout is my favourite film of the year, and I’d never seen a film in IMAX before, but I knew that Fallout would be just incredible.
And I was completely right. Fallout was beyond incredible in IMAX. I already adored the film before seeing it on a screen as big as IMAX, but I loved it even more after (and my parents really loved it too). It was so fantastic and I’m honestly probably gonna have IMAX withdrawals when I see films in my regular cinema from now on.
After that, we headed back to the hotel and went to sleep pretty much instantly.
The following day was the day we were travelling to Rotorua, but we were making some stops on the way that I was very excited about, so I’m gonna add those in here, too.
Cathedral Cove
We left Auckland early on Monday morning and started driving to Cathedral Cove. Ever since we decided to go to New Zealand I knew that I’d have to see Cathedral Cove. As some of you will know, it’s one of the places they filmed The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and, as a Narnia fan, I had to go and see where they filmed it.
The drive to Cathedral Cove was actually pretty nice and once we arrived the weather was wonderful. The sun was shining, and even though it was a little chilly, it was still beautiful.
Now, for those of you who don’t know, Cathedral Cove is actually about a 40 minute walk from where you park. I knew this going into it, but I definitely didn’t realise how long the walk actually was until I did it!
There’s plenty of pretty things to look at on the way, though, which was great, and when you actually get down to the beach, it’s totally worth it. The beach is so beautiful. When we got there, around midday, it was getting close to high tide, so we couldn’t actually go over to the other side of the beach where they filmed Narnia, but we did get to see the main place where they filmed the scene. It was beautiful.
Even if you’re not a Narnia fan, Cathedral Cove itself is beyond gorgeous and I couldn’t recommend it enough. The beach was gorgeous, the water was lovely, the whole place was just picture perfect. I’m pretty sure I took way too many photos.
After the long walk back to the car, we headed off to Rotorua. We stopped at a small cafe a few minutes away from Cathedral Cove and had some lunch and then we drove the few hours to Rotorua!
And that is where I’ll be ending this blog post. I’m gonna try and get the next one up, Rotorua, in the next few days, and it’s an exciting one – we visited Hobbiton, the Redwoods, Hairy Feet Waitomo and Wai-O-Tapu. I hope you’re excited for it! I really loved my time there, and also in Auckland!
POTTERSCENES 
Lovely, this brought back memories of my own visit to Auckland ages ago.
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