I did a little walk on Monday, despite feeling a bit under the weather, down to the waterfront and around the Marina. Auckland calls itself the City of Sails, and it’s entirely justified.

Built onto the water, the harbor and marina take up an important part of the coastline.

As often though, and unfortunately, the city had cut itself off from that area by planting several multi-lane highways right on the waterfront, or between the city and the harbor area. I don’t know what they thought back then when they built this.

Think of San Francisco before the 1989 earthquake took down the highways. Parts of the best real estate in town were taken over by highways on concrete stilts, (which collapsed)… and only now the area is open, mostly car free and a walkable bay paradise again.

Back to Auckland: the city is still in the process of correcting these mistakes, at least partially.

The waterfront is being revitalized and turned into a park. There’s still some way to go. Walking down College Hill and crossing the 10+ lane highway leading to the Harbor bridge, I wondered why my host Harvey had recommended me that area.

I walked through storage spaces, and lots of marine equipment stores, from surf boats to snorkeling equipment to mini-wharfs repairing and maintaining sailing boats. But nothing remotely worth visiting.

Towards the harbor, huge concrete and metal silos, blocking the view onto the other side of the bay. I seriously considered a u-turn.

But: listen to the locals, don’t write it off for what it seems to be….

A bit further, the area got really interesting, called Wynyard Quarter. The silos were partially converted into event spaces in Silo Park, you could climb on bridges, enjoy the view on downtown Auckland, play Basketball, wander around, stop for a coffee or just stroll round the newly developed Marina.

The area hosts the fish market, the Maritime Museum, event spaces, the market… It’s a nice place to hang out, I guess especially at night when a number of bars are hopefully packed.

Some parts of the area are still closed, and they’re busy working on them. I hope they succeed in linking the waterfront back to the city and making this an area people will hang out.

I had a picknick on one of the metal bridges that, I guess, were used to load and unload cargo from the trains (the tracks were still in the concrete) to the ships..

I got potato salad, pasta salad, baby carrots and Babybel cheese, together with Coke Zero.

My sister will recognize this as my typical on-the-road food. I am already training for the road trip through NZ.