New Zealand - Auckland (Jan 8-9)

So since my last post A LOT has happened. My trip to New Zealand was amazing, definitely one of the best trips I've ever taken in my life. I'm going to split up the posts by place I went to since it's way to much for one post! So here goes the night of my flight and Day 1 of the trip:

The flight to Auckland was actually really good, I got sat beside two other backpackers - one girl from the UK who had been living in New Zealand for a year and went to Sydney for a few weeks over New Year's so was heading back to NZ for a few days before flying home, and a guy from Switzerland who is doing a year of school at UNSW (such a weird coincidence cause that's where I work) and was travelling to NZ for a few weeks and touring around on his own. We talked the whole flight and it went by really quickly! As soon as we landed we exchanged Facebook details and then all headed off to our destinations with plans to potentially meet up the next day. I took a shuttle bus to my hotel and promptly fell into bed!

The next morning I woke up to a beautiful day in Auckland and found myself some breakfast down the street from my hotel. I also went and bought a prepaid phone plan for the 2 weeks I was there, to have access to texting, internet, and calling if I needed it. I met up with Matthias (the guy from the airplane) and we spent the day walking around Auckland including going up the sky tower (twice - once during the day and once to watch the sunset and see the city at night), walking through the botanical gardens, getting stuck in the rain (multiple times), and taking the ferry out to a nearby island to look back on the city. It was a very good start to the trip! After a full day of walking around I was exhausted so went back to the hotel and got an early night knowing that the group tour was starting the next day!