Auckland, situated on New Zealand's North Island has many wonderful attractions and places to visit, many of which can be seen in this video. For Auckland travel information visit http://www.AucklandEguide.com and check out this websites for more New Zealand attractions.
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Me and my family want to go to New Zealand for vacation. We're in California and what I want to know is: Where I can find the cheapest prices for roundtrip flight tickets and for good New Zealand discount hotels to stay in? Where are the best places to go and visit in New Zealand? I hear the south island is the best to visit. We'd only be staying there for a week or so, so I want a places that we'd have time to visit. Thank you so much in advanced. I've been wanting to visit New Zealand for ages now.
With respect to prices for tickets, you really are best off discussing that with a trusted travel agent. For hotels, I would suggest looking at something like www.lastminute.co.nz: NZ runs on a fairly standard 'star' system when it comes to accom., so you'll be pretty safe just looking up hotels in whatever regions you decide to visit.
As for places to go, NZ is fantastic wherever you visit. I'm Australian, but have visited many times (it is just over the ditch, after all). It entirely depends on what you're interested in, however. Queenstown (on the south island) is beautiful and well known for the adventure tours. It's close to Milford Sound, which I recommend as a 'must do' on the south island: it's absolutely spectacular. You can get bus tours from Q'town which include a boat trip in the sound.
If you're going in winter and enjoy the snow, q'town is excellent for that, too. Christchurch, also on the south island, is a lovely town. Way down south is dunedin, which is almost dead when university is on break, but is still great fun - if you can get there when the rugby is on, get tickets North island: Auckland cops a lot of flak from the locals, but is actually a great city.
The bay of islands, way up north, is great for beachy type activities, or just for lounging around. It's also basically where europeans signed an important treaty with the indigenous population (the treaty of waitangi), which has great signifcance.
Wellington has a great museum: it's worth driving up to the lookout over wellington for the view at night. It's windy, though Napier is a small but beautiful town: it was flattened by an earthquake in the thirties, so the whole place was rebuilt at once in the art deco style. If you're into art deco, it's unmissable.
Rotorua is a very interesting place, with mud pools, hot springs and geysers. It;s the most popular tourist destination in nz. It's also a base to go on some tours of 'maori villages' which, though very, very touristy, are still quite interesting and worthwhile. These are probably the places that most tourists visit: while there's many more 'secret' places, if you've only got one visit, most people would choose from these - and just because theyre 'touristy', doesn't mean they're not fabulous
North island: Auckland cops a lot of flak from the locals, but is actually a great city.