Blog365 - Day 38

Today I took the train into town to meet some friends from England who were here for the day on their 'Around the World in 80 Days' cruise on the P&O ship 'Aurora'.

So starting from when I hopped off the train at Britomart Station I took this of the old facade that used to be the main GPO in town before the railway station was built a few years ago. You can see the start of the modern station just inside the doorways. BTW the clock was stopped, it was only about 11am.

This is one of the city link buses that does the round trip of the main city including Ponsonby and Newmarket.

With it being the Chinese New Year the whole length of Queen St was decorated with these beautiful Chinese Lanterns. I like the contrast between them and the old ferry building, that clocked had also stopped - maybe there is some truth in what they say about NZ 'the last one to leave please turn out the lights'!!

This is the Queen's Arcade at the bottom of Queen St, another very old building that has been upgraded in recent years but still has that olde worlde feel about it.

Oops how did that get in here? It must be Valentine's Day!

I was meeting Allan & Elizabeth for lunch at the Orbit Restaurant at the top of the Sky Tower but I was early so I sat outside & had a cup of coffee and saw everyone looking skyward, when I looked up there was this man jumping from the top of the tower, just had time to point the camera up and he went zooming past - just as well he had ropes attached LOL.

This is the Orbit revolving resaurant from down below, the restaurant is behind the middle row of blue windows, the row below is the observation deck that we stopped at on the way up and where I took this photo for my 'Self Portrait a Day'.

Taken 186 metres up above the Auckland city centre. Photo fixed in PhotoShop because while hanging on for dear life I took one photo and was out of there before that very flimsy looking 38mm (15") thick glass broke under my weight! Not the most flattering photo of our city but I don't care!

Elizabeth & me sitting in the restaurant, one full circle takes about an hour and the views are out of this world but very hard to take photos when the glass is blue! We are laughing at Allan trying to take the photo, it was about his 4th attempt and it wasn't until afterwards I noticed I had forgotten to take the lens hood off!

A shot of all the new apartment buildings down in the Viaduct Basin area, you can see one of the really old shop buildings still there down the bottom on the right.

The Aurora, wonderful how the other half live isn't it!

The city in the forefront with the container wharf and looking out past North Head on the North Shore to Rangitoto in the distance, one of the many volcanoes that Auckland is built on, none of them extinct either! That's enough for today, my legs are aching from all that walking in this heat, more tomorrow.