We woke up to the sound of our alarm, once again, at 9:30am but we just wanted to stay in bed. I headed to the shower block whilst Andrew went to the kitchen area. I took over in the kitchen but I ended up making too little porridge so I had to make a second batch for Andrew. We began driving in to the city centre and found a multi-storey car park when we reached Newmarket. However, we realised that we were too far out of the city centre so we hopped back into Hector and drove a bit further. We found quite a cheap car park and walked through 'Alten Reserve' to the city centre. The 'Sky Tower' was a major city landmark and as we were walking towards it I saw somebody fall off the thing, albeit attached to a safety wire. We went to the i-site to enquire about tackling the 'Harbour Bridge Climb' but there was no space available for the rest of the day. We decided we would just go up the 'Sky Tower' instead and we had a coupon which meant we got free access to the higher 'Sky Deck'. We had to pose for the obligatory tourist attraction snapshot before entering the lift. The observation deck was fairly busy but we gained a good view out across the city and the harbour. It also had glass panels fixed into the floor so that we could stand on the glass and look down at the street below which made us a feel a bit uneasy. We made our way up a few more floors to the 'Sky Deck' which was much quieter and it had binocular lenses fixed on certain sights across the city with an information plaque so that we knew what we were looking at, which was a good, yet simple idea. We spotted a yellow 'M' on the roof of an old building and so we decided there and then that we would call there for something to eat. Once we had finished gazing down over Auckland we returned to the lift and once we were back at ground level we began our search for McDonald's. We soon found the big 'M' which was housed in a lovely old building and so it was probably the nicest McDonald's we had ever visited. Once we had eaten we made our way to 'Albert Park' which surrounded 'Auckland University'. It was full of huge trees that appeared to be hundreds of years old. There was also a rather fancy clocktower near the entrance to the park as well as a row of merchant houses that we passed as we walked back to the car park. We were puzzled by a sign that read 'NO SWIMMING' in the 'Alten Reserve' as there was no river or lake in close proximity! We reached our campervan and set off towards 'One Tree Hill', but we ended up missing the turn off and the traffic was beginning to build up on SH1 so we just decided to continue driving towards Whitianga. 
We had a rest by the road side where we made a hot Milo and had a piece of birthday cake . The viewpoint was pretty impressive as we could see the mountain range and the sea beyond at dusk. Andrew was desperate for the toilet so he took a quick bush walk before he began driving the last stretch of the journey. We arrived at Whitianga and called off at 'New World' supermarket so that we wouldn't have to tackle the rain later in the evening. It was only after driving a loop of the town that we found a campsite that was fairly expensive considering the time of year. However, we didn't fancy driving around in the rain so we paid for one night. Andrew went to the toilet and returned to tell me that it was $1 for a seven minute hot shower and the washing machine only ran on cold water! I was fairly annoyed as I desperately needed to do a wash and I couldn't believe how greedy it was to charge for a hot shower after the price of a camp site. We went to the kitchen area and made some soup, along with stale bread, but we had to eat it in our campervan as there was no dining area. It rained continuously for the whole night and so we didn't expect to be able to sea kayak the following day.