Auckland Tram Day!
My plan for Auckland was to head to the MOTAT Museum (Museum of Transport and Technology). Cyn was pretty tired out from our Hobbiton tour the day before, so she opted to stay aboard the ship.
Auckland was a tender port for our ship, so it took a bit to get off the ship. I was lucky enough to get on the 2nd tender. It was only a 5 min journey to the port. My first step was to get a transit card, which I got at the ferry terminal. I then walked over to the Britomart train station to take the train to New Lynn, then a bus to MOTAT (a bus was more direct, but I wanted to ride the train). As I was taking pictures in the station, security came up to me and asked me to stop. Sadly 2 days prior, the shootings in Christchurch had happened, so security was a little more sensitive than normal. Once at New Lynn, I got the 18 bus and headed to MOTAT.
It was my lucky day, it was tram day at MOTAT, which meant they were running all their available trams. Typically they operated in pairs or even triples on the single track line with passing sidings. Also, since it was the 3rd Sunday of the month, the steam train was also running. I think because it was St. Patrick’s Day, I was having a bit of luck of the Irish with me!
I was at the museum for nearly 5 hours, riding trams, walking around the displays, rode the steam train, went thru the aviation museum. I had met a Facebook friend who was operating the Double-Decker tram (James Duncan). All the staff was great. I rode every tram except the steam tram (it was simply too hot to ride the steam tram).
After the museum, I took to the bus back to the train, but this time transferring at Avondale. I then had decided to get off at Newmarket for some geocaching. I struck out twice, including an Earthcache (building construction blocked access to the location I needed to get to for the answers). But did get one cache at least, then Re-boarded a train to Britomart. I still had time, so went to check out the currently mothballed Auckland Dockline Tram. Building construction (and politics) in the area caused the operation to stop. They should return to operation someday. I found another geocache, and then went back to the ship.
Due to timing, we did not get our normal table for dinner in the main dining room (we had my time dining). Our servers were not as good as our normal servers, and our table mates were not nearly as engaging. I was disappointed that none of the dinner options had anything to do with the Irish or St. Patrick’s Day. The only place really celebrating the holiday was in the Amber & Oak Pub. At least they had plenty of Guinness in a can available.
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