"It's a case of shags!"

Morning did nothing to improve our liking of Auckland, especially when we tried to drop the car off. We weren't sure where we had to leave it, so Claire and Amy deposited me outside the rental office so I could find out while they went round the block.

20 minutes later they reappeared, having got stuck in roadworks, one way systems and the general crapness that is Auckland's road network. We were not impressed - them having been stuck and me having been stranded in the drizzle with no coat. We finally said goodbye to Ead, our trusty Ford Focus.

Anyhoos, having said goodbye to Ead, we took a walk down to the i-Site. It was still drizzling so we figured we'd head to the Auckland Museum. This turned out to not be the best idea, especially since it involved a much longer walk than we'd expected and it was starting to get quite warm. Half an hour after passing a sign which claimed it was 15 minutes to the Museum, we finally arrived. It's housed in the old War Memorial Museum and has some amazing exhibitions.

Some ignorant kids were climbing on the war memorial itself. I made some inappropriate remark about murdering them. Ahem. Moving on. There was a Spitfire. It was awesome.

There was also a pretty awesome natural history section. Which resulted in Amy coming out with "It's a case of shags!" and me giving her the disapproving look. Oh dear.

Aaaand, then we had to go and retrieve the rucksacks from the hostel and walk to the bus stop. Which resulted in much pain and groaning. Ugh.

Then bus ride up to Paihia. Which was long, dark and wet. It was probably pretty, but it's hard to tell when it's that dark.

And by the time we got to the hostel it was too late for check-in and we planned to leave early in for a trip so we had to leave them a note. Yay.