After an epic series of flights spanning almost 30 hours, I eventually arrived in Auckland, New Zealand on Thursday early afternoon. After a far from perfect journey to get to Gatwick on Tuesday (downpour of rain, no cabs stopping, clothes fairly soaked and all trains cancelled from London Bridge), I eventually got through to the airport, checked in, had a beer and boarded my plane in a journey firstly to Dubai, then changing onto a Melbourne bound flight and finally into Auckland. The first flight was a bit disturbing with some grotesque kid next to me, the second and longest flight was better with a free seat next to me and then the final leg was jam packed, full of Aussies clearly heading over for the rugby. Arriving into New Zealand we were greeted with their insanely frightening immigration customs, with plenty of border patrol officers and even more frantic sniffer dogs everywhere in the airport. Rather frightening. But once through all of that and into the arrivals, I met up with Craig who was waiting for me at the arrivals, exactly as planned.

It had been about 6 years since I last saw Craig, so was definitely good to see him again. Also at the airport was Si, Suzie and Duncs who were there waiting for me, and after we had done the meet and greet between all of us, it was off to Craig's car and then over to Skycity, a huge mall and casino complex in the heart of Auckland, to pick up our stash of rugby tickets, which we wanted to get sorted and out the way as soon as possible. After the ticket collection, we hopped back into the car and were given a brief sightseeing and orientation overview of Auckland by Craig, while heading towards Parnell where our hostel was booked.

Once checked in, our bags dropped and all freshly showered, we took a walk into Parnell and down the high street, and stopped off at McCarthy's Irish Bar for a couple of welcoming beers and to cheers the start to a good holiday 'down under'.

After a couple of cold ones there, Craig and I left the pub and headed back to the hostel, jumped in his car and made our way over to his folks' place, whom I hadn't seen in over 11 years, so was excellent to have been able to catch up with them again - a night of good food, good wine and good company, and landed up only leaving their place around midnight. Definitely not feeling as jet lagged as I imagined I would, and certainly hoped it wouldn't hit me the next day with the opening ceremony coming up.

Yesterday morning Craig headed round to the hostel fairly early, picked the lot of us up (after he caught us all sleeping since none of our alarms were set) and we made our way into the city centre. The streets were buzzing with colours of all the rugby fans out and about, singing, drinking, partying, shouting banter across the street - was brilliant to be part of it. Our first stop of the day was the food court inside Skycity, and since Auckland has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world, it wasn't surprising that the food court was nothing but variations of Asian food, which always goes down well.

After a bite to eat, we ascended up the 328m high Sky Tower, the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere. At the top, we were greeted with amazing panoramic views of Auckland city, the waterfront & harbour and stunning views out past Rangitoto Island. On a clear day, the Tower offers views of up to 80km in all direction, and we must have had something close to that I guess. There was also a glass floor section, with a frightening clear view down to the ground about 300m below, which I wasn't so keen on standing on. Actually very against standing on it, but with a bit of peer pressure and convincing, I half managed a quick photo on the glass. Not that much fun, well, not for me at least - but great entertainment for the others! Far down below the harbour was full of hundreds of little sail boats, a lot of them out and about on the waters, most likely to watch the fireworks later. But it was quite obvious why Auckland also has the name 'City of Sails'.

We spent a fair bit of time up top admiring the views with Craig being our resident tour and info guide to what we were able to see. Once back down on the ground, we decided to head down to the waterfront and along Quay street, the main strip along the harbour. Getting through proved more challenging than expected, with tens of thousands of other people having the same idea. Mixed in with all the rugby supporters was a huge procession of Maori warriors, making their way through into the harbour area, which would later form part of the opening ceremony.

At this point we decided to split from Craig as he had organized to watch the game closer to home and so Duncs, Si, Suzie and myself fought through the crowds to make our way down to Queens Wharf to kick off the celebrations and festivities, which would be the build up before the big game later on at Eden Park.