We allowed ourselves to sleep in a little this morning. The Majestic Princess arrived in Auckland at 7am, and the 90 minutes or so preceding that are really spectacular, with views of several small islands before even entering Auckland Harbour. But those same views exist after sail away, too, and we opted to see them on the way out of the port tonight. Since we’ve been heading to breakfast around 9am, our choices have been the International Cafe or the World Fresh Marketplace (buffet). I do better at the latter, and can replicate my favorite smoked salmon and fruit that I enjoy in the dining room. G brought a McMuffin up from the International Cafe and joined me.
We have a largely silent breakfast these days, taking our phones off Airplane Mode and trying to get emails and check on things that need to be monitored electronically. The ship’s WiFi this morning was non-existent. It didn’t even rate as highly as poor. A fellow passenger who seems to know about these things said it’s because the company that currently manages the WiFi lost the contract for MedallionNet, and has also lost all motivation to keep up the existing system. He said the bandwidth has to be tweaked for these southern latitudes, and that hasn’t been done. If that’s the case, maybe it will improve a little on our next cruise, up to the islands. Meanwhile, I spent 25 minutes and 18% of my iPhone battery life to upload yesterday’s blog post using cellular data. And that won’t even be an option next cruise. Here’s hoping for some latitude relief.
It was a warm day, and we are trying to make our sunscreen last, and so we wore shorts and long-sleeved Ts, and hats, of course, and walked off the ship. The Majestic Princess was berthed at Princes Wharf again today, with no ship at Queens Wharf, so maybe that’s where the Majestic Princess is always berthed in Auckland.
As I’ve said before, Quay Street along the waterfront is totally torn up with construction. It is a real mess right now. We navigated around the many barriers and crossovers and eventually headed south on Queen Street, and had a good view of what is making the laying of light rail track (and whatever other upgrades are taking place) so complicated: these streets were constructed on huge concrete pillars. They were not constructed on the ground. This is going to take awhile.
We were hoping to find a supermarket we had shopped at two years ago for mints and gum, and potato chips for G, of course. Naturally, this supermarket is not at street level, but is underground, so it took some careful searching until we found it. After we completed our shopping, we continued down Queen Street, no easy feat. The sidewalks were packed with people. We happened upon a cell phone store that had a sign that said Free High Speed WiFi, and featured an actual seating area inside with USB power plugs, and- wow- it ticked every single ‘WiFi in port’ checklist item plus a few extra. I was able to open all my emails and add McGuy’s JV basketball schedule to our Google calendar (I’m missing so many games right now, and that gives me the sads, but hearing how well he has recovered from his injury gives me the happys), and even see what the latest news was on such important topics as Harry and Meghan, and this weekend’s games...and whether we’re at war with Iran. :-o
This was in the sidewalk outside a Chinese restaurant.
I don’t know what it is, but I liked it!
We walked uphill then to the Auckland Sky Tower (but didn’t go up in it today) and then back down toward the waterfront. There we turned left, instead of right toward the Majestic Princess, and, for the first time in all the times we’ve been in Auckland, we walked along the waterfront west from Princes Wharf to an area called Wynyard Quarter. This is a formerly industrial part of the port that has been redeveloped with hotels and lots of restaurants and bars with outdoor seating and even several yacht harbors, including a classic yacht harbor that was fascinating, with several beautiful sailing yachts from the early 1900s.
The terminus of the Coast to Coast walk across New Zealand
that we did in 2006.
The Wynyard lifting bridge
Auckland Sky Tower
Classic sailing yachts
I loved this one. It gave G a headache thinking about the upkeep.
Part of the re-development is related to New Zealand hosting the 2020 America’s Cup competition, and several super yachts are expected to arrive here in preparation for that event and its associated hoopla. A few huge yachts were already docked in Wynyard Quarter, including one called the Rocinante, a $268M (I think...or 268 feet long. I don’t remember exactly and I don’t have strong enough internet to open this article right now. Welcome to my world.) beauty. For more information on it:
Rocinante, the name of Don Quixote’s horse
We stopped at a restaurant along the water that advertised vegan coconut soft serve and NZ $10 margaritas (something for both of us!) and enjoyed a short break in the walking. We were in hour five by then, and starting to wear down.
In fact, we were more hot and tired than hungry when we re-boarded the Majestic Princess and rested in the cool darkness of our cabin instead of having a bite to eat in the World Fresh Marketplace. It was just an hour or so until it was time to go to the Elite Lounge in the Vista-less Lounge, and then to dinner, so food was not far away. We were in the Princess Theater by 6:30pm for pianist Jon Darsk’s 7:15pm show. He is very popular, but, surprisingly, there were a few cheap seats still available at show time, probably because the on board time was at 6pm and the Majestic Princess was just starting to sail out our Auckland Harbour as the show started.
Day 10 dinner menu, page 1
Day 10 dinner menu, page 2
Day 10 dessert menu
Jon played for 50 minutes and we still were up on the back of Deck 16 to watch as the Majestic Princess sailed past the numerous beautiful islands that lie just outside Auckland Harbour, and then we were treated to a beautiful sunset. Our weather since Akaroa has been stellar.
It was bedtime then. Actually, it was blog time for me, but my iPhone battery didn’t have much life left in it. I started this post, ran the battery down to 3%, and then had to pick the blog post back up when I awoke in the middle of the night. I had had watermelon before bed again, a lot of it, so my sleep was punctuated with frequent awakenings. My shorts are fitting fine again; maybe I need to go back to the lemon cookies as a bedtime snack. However, McGee texted me a photo of the lunch he had packed himself today. He is in winter conditioning for track and field, and long ago cut out all sugar from his diet. If it’s not healthy, he doesn’t eat it. He is such a role model. Maybe the watermelon is the wiser choice.
Young people I love are leading- friends, teammates, me- by example.
Life is good. :-)
Day 10 Princess Patter, page 1
Day 10 Princess Patter, page 2
Day 10 Princess Patter, page 3
Day 10 Princess Patter, page 4