When I was planning our family vacation to New Zealand, several people asked me, “Why New Zealand?” or “Why aren’t you going to Australia?” I would laugh and say, “Why NOT go to New Zealand? It looks amazing,” or “Sure, I’ll go to Australia another time, but not this time.” After much deliberation, I decided to limit our time to one island, the North Island. We would have a little over two weeks and I didn’t want to be too rushed or spend half our time driving or flying, trying to cram everything in. I took the mentality that we wouldn’t be able to see it all in one trip and that was fine.
I should note that I did all of the planning by myself, from choosing the airlines and flights to where to go and what to do and where to stay. Regarding the hotels, I compared the hotel website prices to those on hotels.com and hotels.com was always cheaper, plus after you stay 10 nights, you earn a free night’s stay.
I’ve summarized our vacation below and given some tips and highlights. After my daughter’s teacher saw photos from our vacation, she was inspired to go there and went this month. I hope our vacation to New Zealand inspires more people to visit.
Since we were flying from the east coast of the United States I decided to break up the flights by stopping over in San Francisco for the day on the way there and back home. This was a fantastic decision, one that I’ll get to the details about later. Flight time from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand is about 13 hours nonstop but since Auckland is 19 hours ahead of San Francisco, you lose a day flying there and gain it back on the return. All that being said, the flight really didn’t seem that long. My husband, daughter, and I filled our time watching movies, playing games, reading, and sleeping. We flew with Air New Zealand, which I had researched and felt was the best airline for us comparing such things as seats, food, reliability, and general comfort based on what I could find online.
The plan was to do a bit of hopping around for our first week, spending one night in a city then driving on to another place, doing a loop around much of but not all of the island, then spending the next week in one city and doing some short day-trips from there but limiting our driving that week. We went in late March, which means it was fall in New Zealand. The weather was absolutely perfect for hiking and going to the beach, both of which we did a lot of.
First stop: Auckland
We arrived in Auckland around 6:00 in the morning. Since it was too early to check into our room, we picked up our car from the rental agency
Apex Rentals and drove to
Mount Eden. There is no admission fee and it’s high enough from the top to give you great views of the city (see photo below). The inactive volcanic crater is really cool to see as well.
We also spent a few hours at the
Auckland Museum. It was good to get some history about the people and culture on our first day in New Zealand. We saw many carvings and historical treasures of the Maori and learned many things.
Abaco on Jervois was a nice but not overly expensive hotel with everything our family needed. Our room felt more like an apartment than a hotel to me, which is a good thing.
Gorgeous photos! I’ve always wanted to visit NZ!
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It’s a beautiful country full of friendly, welcoming people. You should absolutely go!
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