Too good to be true…..

Auckland, NZ oh how we aren’t really sure what we saw in your city since again we were zombies on 3 hours of sleep.

Once we arrived in Auckland we decided to walk around a bit and attempt to find the free shuttle around the city that we were told existed. We were wondering around the visitor center at the Skywalk to try and find a brochure of some sort on the tram, with no luck. So we finally asked a guy at the information desk where the bus stop was so he told us. But either he gave bad directions, or we can’t follow directions (which on 3 hours of sleep I’m pretty sure it was us who didn’t follow the right directions). Needless to say we sat at this bus stop for a while and nothing. Finally a city bus pulled up so we asked him and he said it was further up. So we starting heading where we “think” he is pointing. So next thing we know we hear honking. Okay well whatever, we just kept walking. We heard it again and kept on walking. After hearing it a third time I finally decided to turn around. Sure enough the bus driver was honking at us…why?? Well we were going the wrong way of course. So he pointed to where we needed to go and we finally found it.  So we hopped on and did a circle of the city.
So apparently the day we arrived in Auckland was a public holiday so there was quite a bit of stores that were closed. Let me just go off topic for a moment and say….Is every day in Australia and New Zealand a public holiday? Geez! I think every city shuts down between Christmas and New Years. And apparently since Christmas and New Year were on the weekend this year they get the Monday and Tuesday off of the following week as public holidays so nothing is open!! We’ve enjoyed our time over here, but would advise people to come for New Year and stay after and do everything, not the way we did it.

Okay, back to Auckland…. I must tell you about our accommodations in Auckland. It was a “too good to be true” moment if I have ever seen one.  So the cost was $52 and that included the tax. That should have thrown up a red flag right there. But I think we had spent so much money on the trip already we were ecstatic to find a place so cheap. Our room…..it was smaller than a cruise ship cabin that is located in the bowels of the ship. I do not lie. Unfortunately I didn’t  get a picture. Check out was 10am and it was past 10am and we were in the hall waiting on the elevator when I remembered that I had not gotten a picture. I went back to grab a quick photo while we were waiting and bam…key no longer works. Shoot they don’t mess around. I’m glad  I didn’t forget anything in there. When they say 10am….they mean 10am!!

On our way down to check out we ran into this guy in the elevator. It was a short ride, but long enough to learn that he didn’t like the accommodations either.  We were all in agreement that you get what you pay for when you buy it off the internet!! I personally think it was a backpacking hostel of some sort, but it clearly spun it’s ad on the internet! I guess you gotta give them props…because apparently we weren’t  the only people that they fooled!  Oh and they also didn’t mention the “Adult” store that was located right next door!!

Well, we went to bed early to try and catch up on some sleep that we lost….although you can never really catch up on lost sleep. We didn’t get any sleep that night either. There was no air so we had to sleep with the windows up and there was this annoying siren that went off ALL night long!!! I kept meaning to ask someone what it was, but never did.

The next day we shopped around some more, ate lunch at this HORRIBLE hamburger joint. We ended up throwing most of it away. I’d rather have McDonalds.

It was finally time to board the ship….and it was painless.It was so fast to get on board and of course we headed to the buffet 1st thing after we found our cabin. FOOD!!!!!