Auckland, New Zealand – Auckland Skytower and Orbit 360 Restaurant

Our plane departed nearly on time, and we were lucky enough to use miles to sit in Business Class.  Here is Kim right before we took off.  She is very happy to have a lay flat seat!

The flight was quite bumpy according to Kim.  I slept right through it, for about 9 of the 13 hours of the flight.  Thankfully, the wine is pouring freely in Business Class!

Going through Customs was strange.  New Zealand has this new NZ Electronic Travel Authority that you need to get before you can enter the country, but nobody asked to see it upon entry? Ok.

We took Uber from the airport, and there are plenty of Uber drivers standing by.  We landed at 0855, and were at our hotel by 0950.  Pretty impressive!  The Uber ride was $50 NZ, about $32 US.  Pretty damn cheap for door to door service!

Of course, arriving that early, our hotel room was not quite ready, so we dropped off our bags and took a walk around.  We walked over to the Ferry Building to scope it out since we are taking ferries the next two days.  It’s a beautiful old building, that is undergoing some reconstruction, like everything else in Auckland!

We then walked up Queen Street, which is home to Prada, Lululemon, Louis Vuitton, and several other characters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Kim said they were stores, but I saw barely anybody in them, so I have to presume they are fronts for the undead or some such thing….just waiting for you to walk in so they can have their snack! (OK, maybe watching al 3 LOTR movies in 5 days was a bit much).

We had booked lunch at Orbit 360 Dining at the top of the Auckland Skytower.

The restaurant revolves 360 degrees every hour giving you an incredible overview of the city, and the food was actually quite good, almost as good as the views!

We both had the salmon, and a bottle of New Zealand Pinot from Mt. Difficulty, a winery we will be visiting later on this trip.  The Pinot was just ok.

If you visit the restaurant, you also get to go to the Observation Deck for free, which is a pretty good deal since it’s $32 per person just to go to the top.  The Main Observation Level (Level 51) is large, but it was very crowded!  We went up the elevator to the smaller “Sky Deck” area on Level 60 (722 feet high), which is much smaller, but appeared to be quite a bit less crowded.  Highly recommended.  Here is a view looking down towards the waterfront area.

The waterfront, Quay Street in particular, is under serious construction!  Here is a shot from our hotel.  Hopefully the “I’m backing up” Beep Beep Beep stops at a decent hour.  I can also see a pile driver sitting there….hopefully they don’t get that thing going anytime soon!

We hit dinner at an Italian place called Amano, that gets rave reviews.  The food was good, but the place was noisy, and they had really crappy music playing (sounded like somebody taking a sledgehammer to a drum set with a drunk playing piccilo in the background).

We took a nice stroll up Princes Wharf and watched the ferry’s come and go….there are a LOT of ferry boats in Auckland!  We are off on one tomorrow!