Sky Tower View. Browns Island - Motukorea, Hauraki Gulf, Auckland, New Zealand
My last day in Auckland and I decided to have lunch in the amazing Sky Tower, apparently the hightest man-made structure in the Southern Hemisphere. Indeed, the fine revolving restaurant - Orbit - moves at about 200 metres! Not only that, but during a sip of wine you might actually in a blur through the plate glass window be startled to see someone bungee jump from the storey above.
The views are amazing. This is a take of what is now called Browns Island just as a ray of the Sun caught it. The Ngâti Tamaterâ people called it Motukorea, Oystercatchers Island. By the time one of the first explorers - Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842), French explorer and botanist - saw it in 1827, the island was no longer inhabited. Soon it was bought by William Brown (1809/1810-1898), later to become a newspaper magnate and politician, and Logan Campbell. Today it's part of a natural reserve.
The island is actually an extinct volcano. You can just see the crater dip in this photo. Appropriately it looks a bit like an empty oystershell or 'La Coquille' in French. That was the name of d'Urville's ship before it was rechristened 'Astrolabe'.
Nope, I didn't have oysters for lunch. That would have been too fishy!
PS The restaurant's plate glass does curious things to photo colors, but not unattractively...
Sky Tower View. Browns Island - Motukorea, Hauraki Gulf, Auckland, New Zealand
My last day in Auckland and I decided to have lunch in the amazing Sky Tower, apparently the hightest man-made structure in the Southern Hemisphere. Indeed, the fine revolving restaurant - Orbit - moves at about 200 metres! Not only that, but during a sip of wine you might actually in a blur through the plate glass window be startled to see someone bungee jump from the storey above.
The views are amazing. This is a take of what is now called Browns Island just as a ray of the Sun caught it. The Ngâti Tamaterâ people called it Motukorea, Oystercatchers Island. By the time one of the first explorers - Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842), French explorer and botanist - saw it in 1827, the island was no longer inhabited. Soon it was bought by William Brown (1809/1810-1898), later to become a newspaper magnate and politician, and Logan Campbell. Today it's part of a natural reserve.
The island is actually an extinct volcano. You can just see the crater dip in this photo. Appropriately it looks a bit like an empty oystershell or 'La Coquille' in French. That was the name of d'Urville's ship before it was rechristened 'Astrolabe'.
Nope, I didn't have oysters for lunch. That would have been too fishy!
PS The restaurant's plate glass does curious things to photo colors, but not unattractively...