Our Trip Down Under

We are undertaking our longest international trip which is mostly for pleasure, but contains a work component. 

Our travels started on Monday February 2nd, the morning after the Super Bowl and the Phoenix (Waste Management) professional golf tournament. Fearing a crowded airport, we were up at 4:00 AM and left the house by 5:45. We were to the airport by 6:00. Thank you Anne.  The crush of crowds which the media warned us about was not a problem at that hour and we were to our gate easily before 7:00 for our 8:00 flight. I guess all of the travelers were out late drinking and had no interest in an early flight. 

The flight to Hawaii, though long was uneventful, but crowded. So happy to each have our new tablets well-loaded with movies to occupy the 6 plus hour flight. We bought a mophie to keep them partially charged in flight, but still spent time during our 3 hour layover in Honolulu charging them for our even longer second flight. To our surprise and happiness, the second plane had a USB port at each seat so power was not a problem.Three hours in Honolulu gave us only enough time to snack and enjoy the balmy weather between gates. 

The flight to Auckland was fairly crowded  but my seat was in the middle section on the aisle and the two seats to my left were wide open. The flight to Auckland was about twenty minutes short of ten hours; thank you again movies and all the help we received in getting the tablets and movies. The food and drinks on the flight, though frequent, were just okay. About four hours short of our destination, I was just sure we were going to have our flight extended with an unplanned stop in Pago Pago when a man started screaming at his wife. And he wouldn't stop. I was not looking forward another take off and landing and thankful the flight attendant finally calmed him down.

When we landed  in Auckland  we were informed that we were to be in a sort of quarantine so we should not leave our seats. The flight attendants then proceeded to open all of the overhead bins and used a bug spray that was allowed to seep in for five minutes . Apparently the chance of infestation is high so they take it very seriously. After the requisite waiting period we were allowed to collect our bags and head to the terminal. So our 10:20 PM local time landing got us to the terminal at 11:00 PM. Then it was to immigration and a long line. Once through we headed to our luggage and waited as it was still not on the belt. Finally it was collected when the fourth piece showed up and we didn't have a recurrence of our Venice luggage delay. Now we were off to customs where we became concerned that the turkey sandwich that we had left in our carry-on might violate their import policy so we we were sent to another room to explain what we had. The turkey sandwich was confiscated and we were told we were lucky as we avoided a 400 NZ fine. After them x-raying all of our stuff to prove we had no more contraband it was off to find Super Shuttle. Service was excellent and we arrived at the hotel in thirty minutes. Check in went well and we were in the room at 12:30 AM (Wednesday morning). So from touchdown to the room was 2 hours. Of course, we had been up at that point 24 plus hours. No way to sleep on the plane at least not for me.

In Auckland, we were 20 hours ahead of MST because we crossed the International Date Line. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Date_Line 

It still confuses me, but I am sure we missed Tuesday as we left Monday morning and hit the hotel after midnight Wednesday morning. We missed Groundhog Day. Oh well.

So we tried to sleep in, but only made it to 8:30 AM, but that was okay. We had a nice breakfast at Café Melba   and then did a casual self guided walking tour of Auckland. The weather was drizzly all day, but we did not breakdown and buy an umbrella.  A casual dinner was planned at a Chinese restaurant to empower us as a plan was hatched to hit Auckland hard.