Our hotel is immediately to the right of the HSBC building- 15 th floor for goodness sake. Don't they know this is an earthquake zone?

First full day in Auckland today- great city, none of that claustrophic feeling you get in a landlocked city. The blue sky heps too. Lots of beautiful young things, of all nationalities. the guy in hotel reception recommended a trip over the water to Devonport and as we felt it would be good to escape the city for a while we took the ferry over to this peninsula suburb of Auckland known as the North Shore. It was one of the earliest settled areas of NZ and this is apparent in the heritage buildings; a quaint, unspoilt, quiet area with lots of cafes, bookshops and art galleries. We walked along the shore to the North Head, a historic reserve with lots of fortifications and tunnels and old guns, established at a time when the kiwis were getting twitchy about the Russians- about 1890. The views from the top were incredible- 360 degrees- it's an old volcanic cone- and we took loads of photos of the view back to Auckland . Weather sparkly and sunny with a breeze keeping the temperature down slightly. Perfect. Children already becoming very freckly and photgenic. Will have to cull the photos severely!

Back to Auckland on the ferry- Sophie had a date to go to sleepover at Hannah's; we did a bit a shopping, treated Oli to a very big icecream, then 'home' to open a chilled bottle of Oyster Bay...cheers everyone.