Auckland

And that brings us almost up to date at the time of writing (i sit on the beach in Samoa as I type, pathetically squinting at the screen through sunglasses , trying to decipher what it is I have written on a screen rendered almost black by the sun): my last New Zealand stop was in Auckland, which is as Vancouveresque as Christchurch was Adelaidian. As with all cities that are fundamentally not geared towards pedestrians, it took me a while to get my bearings (Drus kindly picked me up from the airport and drove me around, which meant that on the rare occasions I walked, I was completely baffled), an effect conclusively amplified by the fact that Auckland is built on a number of hills and distances and directions are thus doubly difficult to gauge: what seems to be only a few hundred metres away to the left is actually best reached by taking a kilometre-long road straight ahead, and so forth.
The city is proudly home to only a few landmarks: the syringe-like Skycity Tower (“the tallest in the southern hemisphere”), the Harbour Bridge (none of the solid grace of Sydney's coat-hanger, but impressive in the way that all long bridges are) and the very-modern All Saints cathedral are perhaps the most obvious. Auckland is also a far more stylish place than Christchurch or Queenstown (or, dare I say it, Sydney?) if one knows where to look; some of the styles on offer are not the author's (some great takes on streetwear, some interesting twists on post-Japanese-goth), but they're present nonetheless. The High Street area specifically has a number of shops of interest – though one suspects that by the time the reader is next there, this may be at least rivaled (if not overtaken) by the surging might of the Britomart district.
Almost straight from the airport, Drus drove me down to the fantastic beach at Piha, which was a bit of a drive, but entirely worth it: a rare combination of waves as tall as yours truly breaking on a sandy beach, meaning that one could joyfully exhaust oneself jumping into them, getting thrown about and so forth, all without any risk of death or paralysis by reef or rock. this was really as great an introduction to Auckland and its environs as one can imagine, and I still smile at the memory.
Auckland is also home to the Auckland War Memorial Museum, which functions brilliantly both as war memorial (I don't know who visits the Cenotaph more than once a year at the very very most; what better way to remember than by visiting something that has other, legitimate, uses?) and a museum (three distinct floors: New Zealand in wars, Natural History and The Maori People and Their History). The Natural History Floor cheerfully informs one that Auckland will be completely obliterated by a volcanic eruption in the next thousand years or so (“though it could happen any day”), the War History floor is interesting, but I'm afraid not compared to equivalents in London. The Maori floor is fascinating, in terms of the history, the examples of arts and crafts and the reconstructions and details that have gone into the exhibits. Architecturally, the new Atrium is also rather fantastic. To top it all off, the Souvenir Shop (if one can call it that – some of the souvenirs run into the thousands of dollars) is by far the best one that I have found anywhere in New Zealand and, come to think of it, might be one of the best in the world: genuinely beautifully made ceramics, carvings (bone, wood, jade), indigenous feathered capes that look like something McQueen might have made (did make, with his red ostrich-feather dress of 2005, if memory serves) – as well as rather smaller, simpler items, though all superbly sourced. I have no idea if it is as usual to pass on compliments to a shop's buyer as it is to a restaurant's chef, but I certainly did.