Do yourself a favor, skip downtown Auckland and stay at Dominic's. The Ponsonby area has so many restaurants and great shops. The apartment is awesome and Dominic is incredibly helpful. We'd just finished 9 days of exploring the north island and were in desperate need of doing some laundry. He was kind enough to let us use his machine. And he even made donut recommendations :) Wishing our one night stay was longer! We definitely hope to stay again sometime in the future.