Hello, New Zealand Maritime Museum in Viaduct Harbour, Auckland

My trip to New Zealand with my friend Doug Wreden is soon coming to a close, and we just wrapped up our final full day in Auckland. He wanted to have a relaxing day in the city before leaving, so he went for a run, which is an activity that is calming and therapeutic for him. My stamina is nowhere near as good as Doug’s and running is just exhausting for me, so instead of joining him, I decided to go off on my own for a few hours and visit the New Zealand Maritime Museum.

In case you missed it from prior blog posts, the reason Doug and I came to New Zealand to begin with was because his annual charity event for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation raised US$625,376.68, and the stretch goal for surpassing half a million dollars this year was for Doug and me to go to New Zealand to fulfill an inside joke that he has with his live streaming community. Part of that was to go to the aquarium in Auckland, and I figured that further visiting a maritime museum was also fairly fitting of the theme. As an added bonus, the New Zealand Maritime Museum seemed to have a lot of great reviews as well.

Those positive reviews were well-justified. Even though I don’t really have much of a personal interest on the topic, I can confidently neutrally say that the New Zealand Maritime Museum is one of the best museums I’ve ever been to. Not only does it have a lot of text, multimedia, and items on display like most other museums, but it also has a lot of immersive and highly interactive experiences.

I, as someone who wasn’t particularly attached to the topics and skipped a lot of the reading, still spent three hours taking a look at everything. Someone who is a true enthusiast on the matter could easily show up when it opens, go through the ground floor, take a break and eat lunch at the café, then return to the top floor and stay until closing time.

On the note of topics, even though this is a maritime museum, it covered a lot of adjacent subjects as well. The ground floor had exhibits on landfall, discovery, and settlement of New Zealand; early immigration; and yachts. The top floor had exhibits on maritime art, Kiwi identity, and model ships. Even within those broader categories, there was a lot of granulation of subtopics that helped widen the scope of what museum-goers can learn.

Admission is free for Auckland residents. As an out-of-city visitor, my admission fee was NZ$24, which is right around US$15. I think that is an amazing deal; from my past experience visiting museums, I feel like most major cities would charge around US$30+ for admission to a museum of this size and quality, and I’d imagine places in California would try and get away with charging US$50+.

If you’re in Auckland and want to spend some time doing a peaceful activity indoors, I recommend checking out the New Zealand Maritime Museum.

Here is a collection of photographs from my visit:

The various different sections of the museum are connected via outdoor pathways, and some indoor sections of the museum have windows with great views; here are some photos I took of the Viaduct Harbour surrounding the museum:

 

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