Auckland, City of Sails

This morning, we took the lift to the two viewing galleries in the Skytower (and resisted the offer to do a Skywalk or Skyjump of 194m!). My blip shows the view from the Sky Deck (220m high) looking towards Westhaven Marina ( the largest in NZ) and the Auckland Harbour Bridge. 
The Skytower is 328m high in total compared to London's Shard which is 306m. 
We could see how green the city is with plenty of parks, as well as being surrounded by beautiful inlets and islands.
After this useful orientation exercise, we took the hop on hop off bus to the Auckland War Memorial Museum. There is plenty to see there with Maori canoes and recreated meeting houses as well as other exhibits from New Zealand's ancient and more recent history.  There are  fine war memorial galleries too, the original purpose of the building when it was constructed in the 1930s. 
From here we caught the bus to Bastion Point, the site of a famous 507 day occupation by Maoris in 1970s, demanding their land back from the Government. (The Maori people had agreed to gift  the land to be used for defence purposes, but not for it to be sold off for housing which is what the Government later proposed. ) The Maoris won their case, eventually, but only after a very protracted legal fight.
 We then headed back into town for a cuppa and delicious snack at Bluebells Cakery ( what a wonderful name?)   where we fell into conversation with a  very friendly and talkative Kiwi parking assistant, who ended up buying me a lemon crumble slice! The kindness of strangers? 
This evening we ate at Soul, recommended by my sister. It was very good, and we discovered we could easily develop a wicked oyster habit!