1. It's free
Barry and Suzanne set up this walk, inspired by similar tours of cities they visited overseas. You can join the walkers every day during the summer, meeting at 10am outside The Cloud, where one of their volunteers will be waiting, bursting with fun facts and holding an umbrella. Suzanne tells me up to 40 people show up every day. You'll be handed a map " Barry and Suzanne paid for that too so treasure it - which will give you an idea of where to go. The walk varies, the volunteer varies and the information varies. You may want to do it more than once.
2. Last stand
There are kauri trees in the middle of Auckland city. That's right. There is a stand of these magnificent trees right outside Britomart " they make some kind of artistic statement about how trees make way for progress because they're going to be chopped down for the Central Rail Link. You better get there and admire them pretty damn quick.
3. Brit-oh-mart
The original Britomart was designed as a post office at a time when the ties with England were strong and getting a letter in the post was a big deal and a complicated business. That's evident in the solid state of the building, its dominating presence outside, its elegant columns and decorative ceiling within. Britomart is all about the inside: the English settlers were not quite used to living in an environment where the best things were outside. We've since noticed the nice weather outside and "indoor-outdoor" flow is part of our cultural identity. You can see evidence of that later, in Tanakai Square, where living walls of greenery hang above the promenade. Inside. Isn't it cool how architecture can tell us about ourselves? Thank you, Britomart.
4. The name's Freyberg
He was a boxer, a swimmer, a mercenary in the Mexican Civil War, he was a Governor-General of New Zealand and his statue stands in Freyberg Square. Who was he? He was Bernard Freyberg, first Baron Freyberg, pal of Winston Churchill, the so-called enemy-fire-avoiding "salamander" of World War I and World War II who fought on the Western and the Battle of El Alamein, the Battle of Crete, the Battle of Cassino. He sounds like a real-life James Bond without the martini: at Gallipoli, he swam ashore in the darkness in the Gulf of Saros, ran up and down the beach planting and lighting flares attracting and avoiding Turkish fire and distracting the Turks from the real landing as he went. And then swam back. What a guy.
