The Unexplored Path: A Layover in Auckland

While choosing our flight to New Zealand back in November, we decided to go with one that had a 36 hour layover in Auckland to see part of the North Island. We arrived at about 10 AM and caught a cab to our Airbnb right outside of the city. However, we arrived and there was no one home and the place looked fairly uninviting. We were hungry, smelly, and tired from hours of travel but decided to head into the city center to kill time and get some food. We quickly found out cabs were very expensive and our Air B&B was not nearly as close as we thought it was to downtown. This being said, the cab driver pointed us in the direction of a hostel on the main road in downtown Auckland. At the time being hungry, tired, and smelly (oh and hauling my 64 pound suitcase around) we thought it was a great idea. Boy, were we wrong...

To sum things up, we were put in a shared dorm room with 4 bunk bed crammed in with 6 other girls, making it a full 8 with Rachel and me. I know what you're thinking, "well that is what a hostel entails?" Trust me, this was generously a 2 star hostel. We were stuck on the top bunks with a ceiling that looked like it was going to rot out and fall on our faces, given sheets to make beds that didn't look the most clean, and don't even get me started on the bathrooms. Once we moved all our stuff in and "got settled," we left to explore and try to forget about our sleeping arrangements for the night. Luckily, we caught a hop on hop off bus tour which drove around the city and further out to other sites. I say "luckily" lightly because as if we weren't having a bad enough day... after we payed and sat down on the bus for the tour, the driver informs everyone that the tour will be ending in less than 2 hours. AKA at 4 PM. *insert head with fumes coming out of ears*

Anyway, fast forward through the rest of the day where we decided on Mt Eden as our one location we would stop at on tour as it was pretty far out and we needed to ride back into the city. Mt Eden is known as the spot for the best view of Auckland and it sure was.