Lustrous New Zealand, North Island - Part 4

Auckland City

You can always google up on what are the tourist attractions in Auckland, but we mainly concentrate on walking up Mount Eden, shopping (for souvenirs) on Queen St (Lush is situated here by the way), went up the Sky Tower and just spend the day walking around the city.
( http://www.newzealand.com/int/feature/auckland-attractions/ )

If you still have fund, you can also choose the Skywalk or Skyjump at the Sky Tower! (http://skywalk.co.nz/) Unfortunately, we sort of ran out of fund by this time and opted out of the jump. Entrance for Sky Tower itself is NZD 28.

Skytower. If you can see the fine lines of cable, that's where the skyjump takes place!

Other places that we visited was Viaduct Harbour (http://viaduct.co.nz/ ) at night and we decided to visit One Tree Hill (no, not the TV series) domain  in Cornwall Park, which was perfect to have picnic lunch should the weather was lovely ( http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/parksfacilities/premierparks/Pages/onetreehill.aspx ) ; and go for a scenic route drive, in which we ended up at Piha (http://www.piha.co.nz/ ) that gave us a view of incredibly beautiful + scary at the same time when it was raining. You can view the picture below. The scenic drive turned to be forrest-y view drive, which pretty much what we’re used to back home, to be honest.

Auckland City:

Calculating the duration for parking and googling-map Queen Street

 

Me and my coffee!♥

Where we buy some souvenirs- Whittaker chocolates!

Mount Eden (a.k.a. Maungawhau) Lookout:

Morning walking- little hike on Mount Eden

Where we were greeted with gorgeous view ♥

A little bit more!

And we're here!

Skytower!

It is the highest volcano in Auckland with a large, well-preserved crater, about 50 metres deep within the summit cone

Hence a must-selfie with the crater as background XD

One Tree Hill at Cornwall Park:

Dark clouds looming in...

The small white cotton-ish spots were the sheeps!

I swear this picture wasn't photoshopped!

Scenic-Route Drive & Piha:

Where it was raining and the wind was howling

But after a while, the sky was clearing up!

And gave us this breath-taking view!

Sky Tower:

Up in the lift

They have these glass panels along the floor. Challenge yourself to walk on them!

Despite the brave face, I was actually holding tight to the rail XP

The view outside

SkyWalk on the left and SkyJump (the person in blue-yellow jumpsuit) on the right

Stopby the Sky Cafe for ice-cream and coffee

Viaduct Harbour:

Oh, parking is limited and paid-parking / metered parking is mainly how the system works in Auckland, so you’ll prolly need some (a lot of) coins.

Food & Souvenirs

Now, you may wonder about halal eating places and restaurant during our journey… besides pre-packed food namely Brahims and Maggie that we brought in, you can actually find a lot of halal food in North Island NZ, from kebabs to Indian to Chinese to Malay to Ughyur dishes! You can either google it up along the way, or check with FIANZ (Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand) website

I’d suggest check with:
1. FIANZ Halal directory : http://www.fianz.co.nz/halal-directory
2. Zomato : https://www.zomato.com/ - I figured out this site too late… if not we would have used it a lot more…
- Auckland CBD has a lot of halal places to eat- at Mount Street, near the Auckland University of Technology you can easily find Angie’s Kitche, Bien Japanese restaurant and Kebab place
- we wanted to try Ughyur halal meal at Jadetown Ughyur Cuisine in Dominian Road, Mt Eden but it was closed
- Mt Roskills , Sandringham , Ponsonby areas also offer a lot of halal places to eat- check it out at Zomato.com

As for souvenir, I have to admit that they are a bit pricey, but prices are relatively similar in most places. Some of the keychains we found were cheaper at Te Puia Rotorua surprisingly. There were interesting fridge magnets and badges at Sky Tower souvenir shops that I perhaps missed at other places.

On the other hand, chocolates are perhaps another options to bring home- Whittaker’s ( http://www.whittakers.co.nz/#/home/ ) would be my choice- been liking this brand since years ago- you can choose their blocks, mini slabs or artisan collection (was introduced by Rachie to me by the way). Other options include Pods (Sneakers , Mars etc) because you can’t find it in Malaysia and Tim Tam (their salted caramel was awesome!). You can easily find them at any supermarket, and we do recommend buying them at PAKnSave.

p/s- Authoress notes:

So I hope that gives you a rough ideas on what to do and how much to budget for North Island trip. If given chance, we would probably stay longer in Rotorua and given enough fund, I’d so do bungy and skydive again! 
Do take note that these entries on our trip is not mean to be a budget trip, but rather more on what we want to experience out of our trip to the beautiful scenic country.
Ja, till later~