Anyone who has visited will tell you: New Zealand is a land of unusually wondrous and pleasurable places. Rare penguins waddle adorably down black-sand beaches. Glowworms beam their illumination down from the stone ceilings of otherwise midnight-black caves. Deep fjords cut through impossibly green forests. The jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Southern Alps seem to kiss the blue skies above.
Auckland, the country’s largest city and main entry point, doesn’t always get a whole lot of respect—especially from Kiwis (people from New Zealand) themselves. But this bustling metropolis of 1.8 million people is rather remarkable in all its own ways.
