February 27, 2026
Our visit to Auckland was mostly a bus tour through the city with a very informative guide. Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city, and it’s pretty well spread out. It’s clean and looks pleasant. Most of the signage was in both English and Maori.
Auckland has some of its beautiful earlier architecture.
We were also taken to the Takaparawhau, or the Michael Joseph Savage Memorial Park, named after one of New Zealand’s first prime ministers. Here’s a view from the park. As with most of the of the New Zealand we saw, it’s close to the water.
We took this photo of a palm tree because it was beautiful and because it looked particularly healthy and solid. Compared to the palms we’ve seen on most of out travels, it looks like it’s on steroids.
Tomorrow, Tauranga, and a Maori village,
Dottie and Mal
Auckland is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. It is the most populous city of New Zealand and the fifth-largest city in Oceania.
The surrounding hills are covered in rainforest and the landscape is dotted with 53 volcanic centres that make up the Auckland Volcanic Field. The central part of the urban area occupies a narrow isthmus between the Manukau Harbour on the Tasman Sea and the Waitematā Harbour on the Pacific Ocean. Auckland is one of the few cities in the world to have a harbor on each of two separate major bodies of water.