6am and Jeni is awake. Thankfully I feel great and like I slept well. Though nothing can compare to your first night after the airplane seat. The bed just feels so great.
I looked out our window and saw rain and fog. I guess today is an umbrella day. I just hope it doesn't rain too hard all day. We have some fun things planned but I would hate to be forced inside.
9am Dan and I are up and ready for our breakfast. We have room service on the way and we are very excited. It is my first time getting room service. At 9:05 I looked out the door to see the waiter with our meal coming down the hall. It was so fun to have it brought to us and we ate it all in bed. The meal was fried eggs and toast with hash browns. We also had pears and oj. Dan had some croissants, milk and weird mango yogurt. We thought it was delicious and I was happy it was so easy for us. We just had to sit and wait.
After breakfast we decided it was time to go about our day. We went to find the free shuttle (i should mention that the shuttle was actually a shark) to Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium. This aquarium has a large colony of penguins. Dan and I got to watch their morning feeding via a window and closed circuit TV. It was fun to see them get one fish and then walk away. As if that was all for them, they seem very polite. We also got to stick our hands into icy (-2 degrees Celsius) and tried to hold it in for 30 secs. I made it 10 secs and Dan won by lasting the whole 30. I was amazed at how soon it started to hurt. We made our way farther into the Aquarium and got into a line to take a Sno-Cat into the penguin pen. Once inside we could see up close the penguins and their environment. There were a few nursing and caring for their young. We even saw one penguin sitting on the egg. It was a great joy to see some of the Southern Hemispheres finest creatures. Also at the aquarium we saw sting rays, sharks and plenty of other fish. Dan and I even found Nemo, he was just swimming around with his friend. Once done with the aquarium Dan and I escaped to a pier across the street. This pier gave us amazing views of the Auckland skyline and out into the harbor. It was soooo windy on this pier I thought it would lift me off and I would have to go for a swim. Luckily we stayed grounded and made it back to the shark to go back into town.
We grabbed lunch at an Italian restaurant (we managed to find one after searching for a long time) and had pizza, garlic bread and a salad. Then shortly after we were scheduled to pick up our rental car for our departure in the morning. It was quite interesting to be driving on the left with Dan driving in the right side of the car. We made it back to the hotel without hitting anything or driving on the wrong side of the street. New Zealand marks it's roads very well, I am assuming to help the many tourists they get in camper vans. There are arrows on the road and signs indicating the correct side of medians to be on.
We spent a little time in the hotel and got ready for our dinner at the Sky Tower. We had reservations at Orbit, a revolving restaurant near the top of the tower. We also got free admission to the sky deck so we took advantage of that as well. You have seen some of the photos from this activity. Dan and I both enjoyed ourselves and the meal was very delicious. Worth every penny or shall we say New Zealand 10 cents ( that is e smallest denomination here). I do have to say that views were amazing and I am glad that we were able to take it in for a long time. Also seeing the transition from day to night was fun as we revolved around the city. We made just around two full revolutions and we think it is about 70 mins per revolution not too fast but still noticeable. Once we were done with dinner we retired early. We had a little much to drink (I blame it on the height and revolving) so we went to bed rather early. But then again we had a whole long day of driving ahead so we also needed to rest for that.
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