After the long quiet flight over the Pacific (and heading south of the equator for the first time), we descended into Auckland through thick clouds and in pre-dawn darkness. We were literally surprised by the appearance of the runway lights outside our window just seconds before we touched down.
Our first sight as we exited customs into the Auckland airport lobby was … a McDonalds. American corporations are everywhere here! We saw plenty of different cultures represented; Maori, assorted polynesians. Several men in sarongs and lots of new facial types to gaze at. Handsome people, these Maori.
Outside, there was a constant, light rain driven by some serious winds. Back in Atlanta, this is the kind of driven rain we only get when the remnants of a hurricane come through. And while we eventually learned that this was indeed rather abnormally bad weather for Auckland summer, the locals didn’t seem that concerned about it, and the streets of downtown Auckland were bustling with a Saturday shopping crowd, really as if the weather was of no concern. Sharon got contact lenses especially for this trip and that was a great idea since we were wet most of the day.
We were hugely relieved to be able to check into our hotel right away (at 7am) and get in a couple hours of relaxing and cleaning up. The picture to the right was taken from our hotel balcony, to show the wind blowing the trees around, although you can’t really make that out much … We then headed out into the gale to make the best of it, dodging the ferry crowds along the waterfront and making our way around to the Auckland Fish market.
Apparently this is our new tradition with big trips: go visit the local fish market on our first day in the area (the Tokyo fish market was incredible). 
Auckland’s was no comparison to Tokyo’s, of course, but still wondrous and afforded plenty of opportunities for dropping our jaws at the strange creatures that were being presented to us on ice.
We then headed over to the Victoria Park Market, a bazaar of merchants housed in a very old municipal complex. Built in 1905 as a garbage incineration operation, it had long ago been reclaimed for commerce and tourist purposes. Lots of touristy items like jade and bone pendants and artisan goods.
At this point well beaten down by the wind and rain (oh, and no proper sleep for some 36 hours), we decided to go easy on further walking and hopped onto the Link bus (1 hour downtown loop) and rode that around the city for a bit. We got off and goofed around in a couple big books stores (Chris looking for Maori language books, Sharon looking for NZ bird books). Sharon discovered that there is an NZ bird called the Morepork. There is also an NZ magazine called More-Pork — however the magazine is a niche one about boar hunting that she bought and was horrified by; she had three boar hunting magazines to choose from!
Our local friend Fiona met up with us at the hotel restaurant for an early dinner. Fiona is the sister of our neighbor in ATL and works for Air New Zealand. We had a nice long chat about all the places we are going to, should be going to and wish we had time to go to. We finally collapsed into bed for a long night of sleep.