As usual, today began after noon. Breakfast of champions again too; eggs and cheesy bacon buns. All fueled up, we ventured over to the central transit station and were directed to a bus that would take us to the Auckland museum, which promised (on their flyer) to be a real cultural treat. Hopped on the bus and hopped off a decent distance down the route at the museum stop. The museum area is huge, first we walked through a huge field used for sports and such, then came upon a gardens area. There were two indoor flower areas, which...were flowers...then there was a fernery, which was a big area with lots of ferns. They love their ferns in New Zealand, and the silver fern is the national plant (and symbol for basically all their sports teams) but for some reason was absent from the fernery. So that was enough plants and flowers for this month, and thus we continued along the path up to the large and imposing museum. Walked in the doors and tried to waltz into the gallery quickly but were stopped by the front desk people and told to get our entry sticker. So we got one each and then he said "there is a donation of $10 appreciated for entry." Now, having only ever been to one museum that I actually deemed worth money (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, which was free) I was somewhat skeptical that this museum was worth ten of my limited dollars. Brennan emptied his pockets of his remaining change, amounting to three dollars and he mosied along nonchalantly. I had planned to spout off a clever line about the low chance this museum had of being worth my money, but now that'd look pretty bad, so I fished out 3 dollars as well and although it felt like a loss for me, the guy at the desk was very much not impressed with either of us and our donations being short 7 dollars from average. Whatever, enjoy your six dollars for showing us something that should be enjoyed by everyone for free. We headed in and I immediately regretted the 3 dollar donation as we walked past boring old furniture and clothing. Following that was countless carvings and art by maori artists, then eventually displays on the land and ocean systems and animals of New Zealand. These were all okay and something to look at, but there was also a big area about volcanoes and a little room we went in that had a volcano eruption simulation. It was done like a TV news report then a screen showed an eruption, the lights flickered and the floor even shook back and forth. On the highest floor of galleries, there was a huge display on every war and conflict that the Kiwis were involved in. Very cool and without this, the museum totally wouldn't have been worth it (although the volcano demonstation was worth a couple bucks of entertainment). At the end of the (huge and interactive) war gallery (that had actual WWII planes, mortars, replicas of WWI trenches, and a gallery of the development of firearms and swords), there were 3 massive walls of names of Kiwis who had been killed in conflict. There was one Turnbull, although I suppose that means he wasn't a very good soldier...(and no Shivaks...). We exited the museum and wandered back towards the street where the bus dropped us off, but sort of through a different path. Along the way we passed two charming homeless-looking Kiwis that lipped off to us and tried to pick a fight, so we hurried our pace and went on past the mental hospital (ahh, the crazy guy makes sense now) and the actual hospital, back to the bus stop. We took the bus back into town and walked back to the hostel for a dinner of sausages, garlic bread and spaghetti. Delicious! Then we went down to the Nomads travel desk and booked our Magic bus tour tickets for the month that will get us to all the important destinations and complementary day trips to the Bay of Islands (in the North) and to Milford Sound (in the South).
After dinner we got to take in the New Zealand premiere of Jackass in all it's 3D glory. The 3D glasses here are plastic, professional looking ones like back home, but the lenses were blue and red like the cheesy old 3D glasses that came in cereal boxes. The movie what exactly what we expected; hilarious and full of poo and puke and shots to the groin. Wandered out of the film with a gut sore from laughing and exited the back of the mall complex where the theatre is (went in the front to start) and although it was starting to rain slightly, we were greeted by a huge outdoor art gallery of photos taken from the air in all sorts of countries of very unique and interesting things (like flocks of flamingos and reefs and sand dunes, etc). Further past this was a huge map of the world printed on canvas and laid on the ground and you could walk across it and look at the different countries. It was probably 30 x 50 feet. All sorts of cool little things that show up in random places. Back to the hostel and watched the movie Orphan (horror flick), which was super creepy (but terribly written and way too predictable) and much less enjoyable than Jackass. Tomorrow is our last full day in Auckland and on Saturday we'll take our bus tour up to the Bay of Islands.
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