2nd March 2010. A leisurely drive from Northland to Auckland for an overnight stay before flying to Sydney

We were very sad to leave the beautiful far north of the country, but we were simultaneously looking forward to going on to Sydney.
First, however, there was our last night in Auckland to look forward to and a rather special restaurant.

A final reminder of the familiar mail boxes we had seen everywhere

How could we not re-snap the famous toilets?...

... or remind ourselves of roadworks, New Zealand style!

We paused for refreshments at the somewhat dreary village of Waipu. Its museum pays tribute to the area's Scottish heritage

Another brief stop, this time at Sheepworld...
...only in New Zealand!

We arrived at our rather nice B&B, "the great ponsonby arthotel" at about 2pm, dropped our bags and went for a walk.

That evening, we dined in style at Vinnies Restaurant.
We remembered the chef, Geoff Scott, from our previous visit to Auckland in 2004,
when he worked at the Hilton Hotel White restaurant. It had been such a special meal
and we were keen to savour his cooking again. We were every bit as impressed the second time around!

3rd March 2010.
We posed for a picture after breakfast,
primarily because we blended in so well with the walls!

We had time to kill before our afternoon flight to Sydney, so we wandered around a bit aimlessly!

We were surprised to see an Emirates A380 at Auckland airport

Time to say goodbye to New Zealand as we took off from Auckland en-route for Sydney. We hope to return one day!