In hunt of lunch to start our day out of the apartment, we decide to walk to a waterside area we haven’t visited yet

North Wharf, in Wynyard Quarter, is home to a few restaurant cafés as well as Auckland Fish Market

It doesn’t serve us many food options but it’s a nice place

There’s usually a pedestrian bridge that will take you from here to Viaduct Harbour but it’s not functional at the moment so we get the free replacement ferry to take us instead

Hunger gets the best of us and we go to try NZ’s version of KFC; it’s rather pricey and not the best quality but you never know until you try

As a treat, we pop to the Snickel Lane food market which hosts Altezano Brothers for a flat white and a cappuccino

Energised, we decide to be adventurous: we head to Britomarket and catch the train to Newmarket

Here, we get off and wander around for about 20 minutes to take us to the edge of Tahaki Reserve, or Eden Garden

This is the home of Maungawhau, or Mount Eden, which is an extinct volcano and the biggest in Auckland!

The public can walk around freely and even around the edge of the summit; it’s quite steep but not a long walk and very worthwhile for the beautiful views!

There’s a café with the Maungawhau Visitor Experience Centre where we pop in to learn a little more about the landscape:

• Maungawhau erupted around 28,000 years ago from two overlapping cones
• When active, the lava flowed over an area of 5.6km2, which is enough to fill 32,000 olympic-sized swimming pools
• The volcano’s name comes from the tree that most predominantly grows on the slopes of Maunga – the whau tree – and means “the mountain of whau”
• This tree has one of the lightest woods in the world which is used by Maori people as floats for fishing nets

We then make the walk back to the city, rather than taking the train back, and wander through Symonds Street Cemetery before getting back to the apartment to have a brief rest

One of the pubs we saw earlier in our stay claimed to have a Monday night pub quiz so we get ready and head out

Sadly, upon arriving, we find that this pub is closed for today for some reason… we go to The Brit pub which is close by and has a 2 for 1 offer on pizzas tonight

The Conquistador and the Da Vinci Code as well as a glass of sauvingnon blanc and Tokyo dry larger

We head back after for our last sleep in the apartment