You're arriving in Auckland through Auckland Airport and you get the pilot's view coming in! So beautiful -- and you get a great sense of just how green the area can be!

Auckland Airport sits a little over 15 miles (24 km) outside of the city, so enjoy the scenery of the surrounding area as your flight approaches and lands at the airport. (It's cool to hear the radio chatter too!)

You are so lucky that while going through the airport, you get to witness this New Zealand family welcome a loved one back to town with a traditional haka!

In Māori culture, the haka is a ceremonial dance or challenge performed by a group. It includes foot stomping, vigorous arm and hand movements, rhythmic shouting, and lots of big facial expressions with tongue protrusions.

You may have seen a haka performed before a sporting event involving a team from New Zealand (they're common at NZ school sporting events too) and haka are also commonly performed in New Zealand to welcome distinguished guests, celebrate great achievements, and mark other important occasions.

This is really a touching ""welcome home"" for this family member!"

You've got a big staycation ahead of you, so let's get you settled into your hotel -- the Pullman Hotel Auckland. We have you in the penthouse apartment -- hope it's enough room for you! Enjoy this look around the hotel and your "room."

Now that you're checked in to your hotel, let's check out one of Auckland's biggest attractions (certainly the tallest one)! The Sky Tower! And as the tallest thing around in Auckland, you'll catch sight of it many times during your staycation here today.

Auckland's Sky Tower is a combination tourist attraction, hotel, fine dining opportunity, casino and more! We're going to bypass the lower levels and go right to the fun up top with a pint-sized tour guide who is literally going to jump off the top of the tower!

Now that you've gotten a sense of Auckland from high above, let's take a look around at street level (and calm down after that exciting jump off of Sky Tower).

Here's a walk around Auckland's central business district. You'll see reference to ""Auckland CBD"" all around the city -- central business district is what that ""CBD"" stands for.

Have a good walk around!

Now that we've been outside for a while, let's pop inside for just a bit and take a peek at the New Zealand Maritime Museum.

So much of New Zealand's culture -- and Auckland's in particular as a harbor city -- is influenced by the waters that surround it. This museum is a celebration of New Zealand's connection to the sea through immigration, trade, design, innovation and leisure. Pretty cool!

If you'd like to poke around a bit to see what the museum has to offer, here's a like to their web site for more exploration.

Now let's go from a museum about maritime life to an actual maritime activity -- it's time to go whale watching!

Robin and Laura of NZPocketGuide are going to be your hosts for this neat trip out on the water to spot whales and whatever other sea life can be found along the way. And if you're someone who gets seasick, don't worry -- you shouldn't even need a motion sickness pill for this part of your Staycation Tour!

The whale watching tour guides called it right - it rains quite frequently in Auckland, so let's follow Laura's lead and pick an inside activity for our next Staycay Tour stop: the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.

Here's a quick peek inside a day at the gallery and then our next stop will give you a link you can use to explore some of the gallery's collections if you'd like.

The Auckland Art Gallery is a very cool place. If you'd like to view some of the art the Gallery holds, feel free to use this link to browse some of the collection including some really special Maori portraits painted in the late 1800s.

Ready to turn your Staycation Tour up a notch? Will bungee jumping off a bridge suffice?? We think so!

This is so fun!! You get to join Yona Knight-Wisdom, the first male Jamaican Olympic Diver, as he sees how well his diving skills might work jumping off the edge of a bridge tied to a bungee cord. Way too fun to watch! And the question is: would you do it? Let's see what you say after you see this!

Enjoy!

Has all that jumping and seafaring and museum strolling worked up an appetite for you? We hope so, because you're lucky enough now to have two world-travelers who go from country to country looking for great food as your hosts for a tour of good eats in Auckland. And what's more, they're not just Kiwis (natives of New Zealand), they're actually both from Auckland itself, so you're getting a real insider's tour!

Bon appetit!

After enjoying great food, there's nothing like a good walk -- so let's take a stroll around Auckland's Albert Park.

The park was originally laid out in the 1880s and the cast iron fountain you'll see came over from Great Britain in 1881. Enjoy the stroll around.

Our next stop on your Staycay Tour of Auckland is the city's Museum of Transport and Technology. MOTAT for short, It's a cool place that gives visitors a chance to learn about and explore the achievements that have helped shape New Zealand.

The museum actually sits on two different sites on either side of the Auckland Zoo, and a vintage tram ride you'll take connects the two. We're going to join a family as they tour the museum's sites, and then as long as we're here in the neighborhood we'll head from over to see the Zoo on our next Staycay Tour stop.

Welcome to the Auckland Zoo, home Of New Zealand's most diverse animal wildlife! This zoo is home to at least 144 different species and over 1400 animals, and you have a beautiful day to explore the place.

After you've explored the place, our next Staycay Tour stop is a really cool insider's tour of the Zoo's veterinary clinic! But first, have fun seeing the animals here.

If you're a fan of any of the great animal doctor TV shows out there, you'll really love this next stop in your Staycay Tour.

Here's a special behind-the-scenes look inside the Auckland Zoo's own animal clinic, and today's patients include a beautiful serval who needs a root canal. (Servals are a type of wild cat native to Africa.)

Your Staycay Tour of Auckland is almost at an end, but given how connected this city is to the sea, the tour wouldn't be complete without a visit to SEA LIFE Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium.

The penguins are adorable, the tortoises are elegant, and the bounty of their fellow aquarium residents is breathtaking. We hope you truly enjoy this final stop on your Staycay Tour.

And just like that, our Staycay Tour of Auckland has come to an end. We hope you've had fun!

And as you fly out of Auckland Airport, we hope you'll see the sights of the land and sea below you differently now that you've learned so much about them as you toured the city.

Thanks so much for taking this Staycay Tour -- we hope you enjoy another one with us soon!

Welcome Home!

You've finished your tour. We hope you had fun!

Of course, no vacation seems complete without souvenirs. So, here's our version of a gift shop -- links to some places where you can find fun souvenirs of where you just visited.

(We don't make any money off of your purchase or you clicking the link or anything like that, so don't worry about the prices being inflated. Happy shopping!)

Buy a souvenir of your Staycay Tour from:

• Amazon.com
• CitySouvenirs.com
• Etsy.com

Send a postcard to someone to share where you went (while staying home):
mypostcard.com

Want to take another tour? Click here to see our destinations!

To restart this tour, just advance to the next screen to begin once more at the beginning.