Sad goodbyes in Auckland...

 December 30, 2024

Auckland, New Zealand

We are losing a lot of friends today as 230 passengers are getting off and 230 are getting on in Auckland. Long Beach to Auckland was a 32-day portion of the 46-day Long Beach to Sydney cruise. Especially good news for us, to offset the pain of leaving several friends behind, is that we now have accumulated enough points to be eligible for---drum roll, please!---free bags of laundry, one for each of us every seven days! No more queuing for the four (only) washers and dryers! It takes so little to make us happy!

Auckland is HOHO territory. Not laughter but the Hop On Hop Off busses that work in most cities around the world (not Wellington, however, but the weather in Wellington is supposed to be terrible so we probably wouldn't do it anyway).

There are two routes, the Red Route and the Blue Route. One ticket entitles you to both routes but you must change busses to go from one to the other. We lucked out with the first Red bus we got because it changed to the Blue route at the changeover location (where we would normally have gotten off the Red but and waited for a Blue bus) so we stayed on. When the Blue bus got back to the changeover, it changed to the Red bus so we never had to move and got the whole two tours.

While we were in AKL, Royal Princess was also in port. We are 450 passengers, Royal Princess is 4275 passengers! Not a good photo but interesting to see the size difference!

Some of our good friends who left the Quest in AKL.

The day before AKL, there was a goodbye and thank you party to thank all the staff who work so hard on board to keep us fed, watered, and clean!

We have been to AKL a few times before so we just wanted to ride and around and sightsee.