Day Four in Auckland

Today's Auckland adventure started off with brunch and then a trip up to Mount Eden, a leafy suburb only about 4 km (2,5 miles) from the Central Business District.



Mount Eden is dominated by the dormant volcano which can be see from across the city.  The mountain was declared a public reserve in 1879.




It's a great place for brilliant views of the city.

Next us was a trip to the Auckland War Memorial Museum.  The neo-classical building sits, on the remains of a dormant volcano, connected to a large public park.  The museum was inaugurated in 1929.


In front of the museum is a memorial to those who died in WWI and WWII.

A Māori Pataka

The museum was very well done.  

It covered a good deal of New Zealand history including the Treaty of Waitangi.

There is quite a bit dedicated to New Zealand's contributions in the Boer War in South Africa, WWI, and WWII.


Gottfried Lindauer (1839 - 1926) was born in Plzeň, Bohemia, during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His Czech birth name was Bohumír but later changed it to the German translation while studying to be an artist in Vienna.  So as to avoid being drafted in to the Austrian army in first went to Germany and in 1874 he immigrated to New Zealand.


He is best known for his portraits of prominent Māori chiefs who had commissioned his work.

These three paintings are currently on loan to the Auckland Art Gallery.

There is gallery with a permanent exhibition about Volcanoes.  I guess that's appropriate for a country located in the Ring of Fire.  The exhibition was interesting.  There's a 10-minute simulation where you enter a model home and experience an earthquake as an Auckland volcano erupts.  The last Auckland eruption was about 600 years which created Rangitoto.  Hopefully this exhibit is as close to a real Auckland volcano eruption as we'll experience.