4 Days in Auckland (Dec-23)

In this blog:

The SkyCity Hotel

Auckland City Zoo

Kelly Tarltons Aquarium

Waitomo Caves

Weiheke Island

When we were planning our NZ and Australia trip, everyone told us to largely skip the North Island and head directly to South Island.  However, we had decided to take a very un-American 30 days of vacation for this trip, so wanted to get the most of out of it and cover as much ground in NZ as we could.  With this being Sienna’s (5 at travel time) farthest trip by a long shot, we also wanted to avoid constantly being on the road and allow ourselves 4-5 nights in each location, using those as jump off points – so we chose Auckland for our North Island portion of the trip.  Overall, we are glad we didn’t decide to skip the North Island!  We did notice that we saw virtually no kids between the ages of 2-8 in Auckland – almost none of the restaurant had kids menus and one family we encountered on Weiheke with toddlers told us that when their 6-year old got sick in their rental car, they couldn’t find any clothing stores with kids sections and were told they’d need to go to the suburbs for this.  Odd!  But I wouldn’t say that the city isn’t kid-friendly, we had a great time with Sienna, so don’t let this deter you! We also decided to fly Air New Zealand because of their Sky Couch - read my full review of the Sky Couch on Air New Zealand here.

Our first 4 hours in Auckland were not such a win – I’m only including this section to add some levity and to let you know that if (and more likely when) you experience some bumps in your travel roads with your kiddos, we share your pain!  We got in an hour earlier than expected and landed in Auckland at 5am; the Enterprise rental counter didn’t open until 7am, so we had to hang out at the airport to wait for that.  When we got to our hotel, it was too early to check in – nor was much of anything else open.  We decided to tour the city on the Hop on/Hop Off bus to kill a couple of hours and get our bearings.  Not 15 minutes in, Sienna projectile vomited all over our seats, then promptly passed out for the two hours and we had no choice but to stay on the bus (though we did manage to clean up the seats as best as we could with wet wipes and a paper bag) – apparently she picked up a stomach bug in school the day before we left as we got a note from her school that day that several kids were sent home.  So that was a fun start to our trip!  Luckily, we seemed to have gotten all of the unpleasantries out of the way the first few hours, as the rest of our time in NZ went off without a hitch.

We stayed at the Sky City Hotel instead of the Hilton on Quay that had come recommended, primarily because of the room sizes.  I would rate the Sky City Hotel a 6.5 out of 10 – if your primary concern is room size and onsite dining, I’d recommend staying here.  If being in a nice area is more important, I’d recommend staying on the waterfront.

The Pros:

• Large rooms; ours had a huge separate living room area in addition to the bedroom with two queen sized beds

• The hotel complex included a casino and several restaurants, as well as great gym

• If you find yourself in Auckland over the holidays, the hotel had nightly holiday entertainment and Santa visits

The Cons:

• While very centrally located, the neighborhood felt a bit sketchy when walking around, we definitely stepped over some homeless bodies walking to and from drug stores and restaurants nearby

• Service was just ok; it took them 3 days to fix the TV in our bedroom, the shower had bottles of lotion instead of body wash at arrival, and the concierge was largely useless for restaurant reservations and recommendations.

Here is what we did in our 4 days in Auckland:

Day 1 – arrival, Hop On/Hop Off bus tour, walked to amazing lunch at Odettes, and got some rest

Day 2 – Took ferry over to Weiheke Island, took Hop On/Hop Off bus there to lunch at The Oyster Inn and sampled wine at Mudbrick, which was gorgeous!  We really needed more time on Weiheke and regretted not having booked reserve ferry tickets but rather standing in line in the walk up ferry, which took us over 1.5 hours to get on a boat.

Day 3 – Visited the Kelly Tarlton’s Aquarium and Auckland Zoo; both are quite entertaining for being on the smaller side and a good way to burn some time if you have nothing else to do.  Then walked along the waterfront on Quay and had drinks and dinner there.

Day 4 – Drove to Waitomo to visit the Glow Worm caves, which were amazing (sorry, they allow no cameras inside the caves)!  It was really cool to learn about the history of the caves via the stalactites and stalagmites, as well as learn about the glowworms.  We stopped at The Thirsty Weta for lunch prior to arriving at the caves, which his a cute diner about 10 minutes away with great salads, fish & chips, and a kids menu (which we had not seen many of in Auckland).  This 1-hour trip each way also was the first glimpse of the famed NZ countryside for us, though we saw hundreds of cows compared to just a few sheep!

Best things we ate in Auckland (generally speaking, the food in Auckland was fantastic, and we had several “best ever” dishes here):

• Roast duck at Huami – Huami is a high end Chinese restaurant located in Sky City and had some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever had.

• Roasted Chicken at The Depot – The Depot was across from our hotel and had a cool hipster vibe with fantastic meats; I don’t usually order chicken out, but theirs really blew me away and may be one of the best roasted chickens I’ve ever had.

• Spicy dumplings at Eden Noodle Bar – they have several locations, and we’d recommend going to the CBD or New Market ones rather than the Dominion location we went to, as that one was very sketchy.  However, the spicy dumplings made the visit very worth it!

• Absolutely everything at Odettes – trendy restaurant with very cute outdoor patio area and amazing food across the board.  We had their duck salad, puffbread with ricotta and apricot, and lamb shoulder.

• Salmon at The Oyster Inn – this was in Weiheke and everything was great, but the salmon really stood out as the best I’ve ever had, and we eat a lot of salmon!

Overall, we enjoyed walking from our hotel to and from the Quay and seeing all of the fun holiday entertainment the city puts on - the food in Auckland is also arguably collectively the best food we had on our entire NZ/Australia trip. The city itself isn't a stand-alone destination, at least not for us - but if you're wanting to see the North Island, it's worth stopping into!