Impressions of Auckland — An Elegant Sufficiency

The sleepy, rather quaint place where everything closed on a Saturday afternoon has been replaced by a vibrant, modern city and Captain Abhi placed Mariner right there in the centre for a couple of days. We had made a few plans and during our time there gathered a few impressions along the way.

The old Ferry Building has been dwarfed by the contemporary skyscrapers around it, but stands proudly, centre stage on the wharf.

I wonder if the new, white blobby-shaped ferry terminal will still be there looking as good in a hundred year's time?

There is always such a warm welcome from everyone here and it's really appreciated.

This blend of old and new has been well considered, we thought.

Though it remains the City of Sails there are a fair few more costly craft in the harbour as well, especially during the southern hemisphere summer, when huge superyachts are brought here to avoid the winter weather up north.

We'd known the story of the “Nippon Clipons” from our first time here. When the bridge was built in the 1950s, it was soon overwhelmed by the amount of traffic and required an ingenious solution from the Japanese manufacturer: a couple of extra lanes were added on each side, referred to as the Nippon Clip-ons. As we drove over the bridge, Richard, our driver, told us exactly the same tale as we'd heard on our first visit. Some things don't change, but perhaps the traffic gets even worse?

Houses. We drove into Devonport, a charming community on the north shore of the bay. Here , amongst the million dollar homes remain some of the original bungalows and batches

There were also several grand old Victorian homes too, all built from kauri wood and still looking wonderful. We smiled as we remembered watching a NZ TV game show offering a huge quantity of paint as their star prize. It took us a while to realise what immense value that prize would have to someone owning a painted house such as this!

Memories from home. This area had been settled by British families and there was a distinctly familiar feeling about the place, if somewhat reminiscent of the recent past 😉

Princess Buildings, Victoria Road and Cheltenham Beach, plus the name Devonport itself. Not only is it one of the Naval HQs in the UK, it's the name of the place where the New Zealand Navy is based too. Coicidence? I don't think so!

The pōhutukawa or New Zealand Christmas tree. We have a sprig in the form of a bauble that hangs on our Christmas tree each year and I was glad to see a real one here today.

Weaving New Zealand flax. Richard sent round this sample, woven by a friend of his from a phormium leaf in her garden. Since we have some rather troublesome phormiums (phormia?!) in our garden at home, I might give one of them a trim and see what I can weave!

Weather. Four seasons in one day. Just like home!

Aotearoa or just a large raincloud?

In Auckland, the ferries take us to other interesting places too.

Stonyridge being just one of them.

Our impressions here were good. Very good, in fact!

And next year's vintage, to be made from the current harvest looks to be even better if the taste of this sample of the grapes just coming in from the vines is typical.

The setting of these vineyards is utterly gorgeous, especially in the sunshine.

The views from another, neighbouring vineyard were lovely too.

The label on the bottle gives it some class too, don't you agree? 😅😉

Other local products added to our favourable impression of the island, too.

Especially when, five minutes before that, we had seen where those olives had come from.

But it was the big, old cork tree standing majestically outside the door that caught my eye. This winery no longer corks their bottles but uses screwcaps, so that magnificent bark will remain in place and looking fabulous for some time to come.