Hello Mami and Papi

Today I was going to finally meet up with my parents on the other side of the world.

I planned to meet them at their Hotel, which was just around the corner from my Hostel around 10am.

So I thought I might as well check out around 9:45.

As it turns out this is the latest possible check-out time anyway and Unfortunately the staff had realized over night that they had only charged me 4.68 $ for the room on my credit card instead of 46.88 $ (26.88 for the bed and 20$ for key deposit).

I had to pay the rest. I had nearly been payed 15 $ for sleeping at a hostel, that would have been nice. I would have let them know about their mistake if it had been a good hostel but it wasn't.

From what I can tell so far about New Zealand and Australia (and what I have heard), the hostels out in the country side, especially at the not so touristy places are much better, with nicer atmosphere than the ones in the Cities, which are just places to sleep.

Fully packed and checked out I walked down to my parents Hotel waited in the lobby. Not much later they arrived and the welcoming was great.

Here we were after 4 months on the opposite side of the world and they even recognized me straight away despite my newly acquired beard.

Since the room wasn't ready yet, we left all our luggage behind reception and went to find some breakfast.

Just around the corner of the Skytower (which itself was only a few meters from the hotel) we found a nice coffee bar and enjoyed a big breakfast and exchanged stories of the last months and my parents first trip to Asia, where they stopped over on the way down here in Seoul for a day.

For being on planes and in foreign countries both were very well and fit. No signs of jet lag or tiredness :-). I'm a proud son, Mami and Papi!

After my breakfast and whatever meal it was for my parents, we repeat very much the same walk we I did in the morning and then passed by an AA (AAA or ADAC) office where we just wanted to have a look for free maps.

Two hours later we were members (free transition from ADAC) and had booked plenty of hotels, ferries and bus rides.

Now our room should be ready and we all were in the need of a little rest.

Towards the afternoon we wanted to further explore the city and a longer route on which we visited a great little craft beer pub and also checked out what was happening in the fancy harbour area and the Yacht marina.

We enjoyed the view of the Auckland Harbour bridge just when the sun was setting and then headed back to the hotel.

The layout of the bay of Auckland, the Harbour Bridge and the Sky tower have a stunning resemblance to Sydney. Just the Opera House is missing and it's a bit smaller.

Before heading up to the room we dropped into a small Mexican Take away around the corner to get dinner.