Same old boring hotel morning. This hotel doesn’t have breakfast included, and we’re too cheap to pay for the overpriced buffet, so we found a nice coffee shop nearby that serves food. I had a very large and satisfying breakfast burrito.

Then we walked over to the Auckland Art Gallery. As with all museums in this part of the world, they had so much for kids to do. It wasn’t a huge place but we ended up spending almost 4 hours there.

First, they had an activity booklet for the permanent exhibition. It took kids on a little guided tour and asked them to draw things in response to the art. It kept Millie busy enough that I could actually look at everything.

After this, they had a crafting area set up where kids could make vases out of paper. She did this for about 20 minutes while Nick and I traded off and went to look in some galleries.

We discovered a figure drawing session for adults in one of the adjacent galleries. There was a model doing 5-minute poses, and about 50 adults surrounding her, quietly sketching away. Even though it wasn’t for kids, I knew it would be interesting for Millie to see.

She got even more into it than I predicted. A museum employee had some extra paper and I had pens and crayons in my purse. She set up on the floor and carefully stared at the model between all the other artists on their little stools. She kept looking up, then down to sketch, then up again, just like all the other sketchers.

I got choked up watching her draw. Not only was there something so sweet about her paying such close attention to detail and trying her best on the drawing, but to have 50 other people of all ages doing the exact same thing and the same time… I just loved it. She drew all 4 poses that the model did, capturing different details each time.

In the two poses below, the model held a little model of a skull.

In this one she lay down. I love how Millie included the detail of the painting behind her.

Gosh, I love her.

Once the figure drawing was over, we used the museum’s art game to explore another gallery. The premise is that you have two dice that you roll, and then with the results you are pointed to prompts in a little book. One was “walk around and find your favorite piece of art, then take a picture of it and see if your parent can find it”. Another was to have your parent explain the art to you with your eyes closed, and then look at it and see if it’s what you had imagined based on the description.

There were so many prompts we didn’t get to, so we bought a copy of the game for future museum visits. While they played this I looked at all the portraits of chiefs. Loved them.

Believe it or not, there was one more amazing thing for kids. It was a collaborative sculpture gallery. We first spent a while admiring the details of what everyone else had done, and then got a small box of clay to add to it.

Millie, with Nick’s help, made Elsa. They put her high up on a wall.

This visit ended up taking up most of the day! As we were leaving, Millie reminded us it was Friday. Even though we had ice cream yesterday, we stuck to the schedule and had Ice Cream Friday. She got a mango gelato.

We walked around a bit looking in bookshops (browsing an independent bookstore has to be up there with one of life’s best experiences) and getting some new workbooks for her.

We came back to the room for about an hour to drop everything off and rest, and then went for a mediocre dinner nearby. We ate outside and watched an unbelievable sunset through the buildings.