Goodbye, New Zealand…

Wow, those 4 weeks seriously flew by! Yesterday around noon I arrived in Auckland, and I’ll be leaving for the airport soonish. It’s almost an hour on the airport shuttle, and I’d rather be early than late (also, I need to check out from the YHA at 10am anyway).

It was nice to meet up with Kirstine yesterday, who I’d shared a dorm with in National Park, while we both waited for check-in times at our hostels to start. The lucky girl still has weeks here! 🙂
Kirstine & myself

But really, I shouldn’t complain – it’s been an amazing time, with so many good memories revived and good friends re-visited, as well as a couple of new things seen to love about this country… I do hope it won’t be another five years until I can come back!

And I do have things to look forward to at home, of course – like a “proper” Christmas with my family. Because that’s one thing that just feels weird here. The mood simply isn’t right, although they do try with decorations and (snow-filled) holiday songs, mostly in shops. Or as art installations. 🙂
Christmas trees from plastic bottles on The Civic

Anyways, time to tear myself away from this lovely free wifi. My luggage is 5kg lighter, so that shouldn’t be a problem at the airport. Not that I really knew how heavy it was before, I just knew that it was heavy, and that overweight fees are steep. So I figured I shouldn’t risk it and will be getting my summer clothes and some other stuff in a few weeks’ time by mail…

It was actually a bit of an adventure to find the paper shop-cum-post office – weirdly almost all post offices are closed weekends, so I had to take a bus and then got to walk back, which was quite nice. I got to see the University of Auckland, which has some nice architecture. Maybe I shouldn’t keep ignoring Auckland and spend some actual time here next time, my irrational dislike for the city aside. Next time! 🙂
Auckland

Note: All photos can be found in this set on Flickr.