There & Back Again...

A dream trip was about to begin. I choose the title "There & Back Again" as a play on Bilbo's story of his adventures in The Hobbit. New Zealand and Australia were our pie-in-the-sky big bucket list items. We were going to see the New Zealand portion of that wish list. At the end, we would have bit of time in Fiji. In total, we would be gone two week, the longest we have ever been out of the country. 

Wed, Mar 15, would be our departure day. Our flight would leave Cincinnati at 1:59pm. This allowed us the blessing of sleeping in a bit. Then finish up packing and loading the car. In truth, the most grueling part of any journey is the getting there and the getting home. You get tired during the trip but the getting there and getting home is simply grueling.

We started our journey with a quick stop for our traditional breakfast at Bojangles. Then on to the Cincinnati airport. 

Jake took over my Trivial Pursuit postings to our family. He is great at this. He started with an Irish blessing. It would be fun to read the families responses and Jake's fun way of setting up the question and responding to their chatter when we had our cellphone service on the trip.

Se got to the Cincinnati Airport and the long-term parking was abuzz. It seems this day the parking garage by the airport was completely full and the valet parking was also completely full. These poor people had no choice but to go to long term parking and find a spot. Fortunately, this parking lot runs really smoothly and was handling this overflow very well. We have never seen this happen in our almost 19 years in Kentucky. 

Our flight was on time and took us to Atlanta where we would change planes and have an almost 3 hour layover. We determined that we should get a good meal-o-the-day in Atlanta with this time. We found a Chinese place and enjoyed this for dinner. We don't get Chinese food very often so it was a nice treat for us as well. 

We arrived in Los Angeles about 8:30pm. Our luggage also arrived. This is always a blessing, seeing the luggage arrive. We made our way to the International Terminal and were able to check-in for our Fiji flight. Then security and a VERY long hike to the gate for our 11:45pm flight from LA to Nadi, Fiji.

Fiji Airlines would feed us dinner after getting on the plane. Dinner at midnight is not my thing at all. I blew up my travel pillow and promptly fell asleep. I don't usually sleep well on the plane. But I did this time. When I woke up, Claude was finishing his dinner. The flight would be 11 hours. Once they feed you, the lights go out and they hope people will sleep most of that flight. In the morning, they will turn the lights on and serve you breakfast. This time it was pancaked with chocolate between them! I do have a sweet tooth but this was too sweet for me.

We arrived in Fiji on Friday at 5:45am. We actually missed Thursday because we crossed the International Date Line. The lines to get through customs were extremely long and very slow. However, there were musicians playing lovely music to help with the repressive heat and long lines. We made it through and boarded the flight from Nadi, Fiji to Auckland, New Zealand at 8:30am. This flight would be about 3 hours. On this flight we were again served breakfast. I couldn't help but relate this to the Hobbits again who have second breakfast!

Auckland's customs was way far away and a long walk. On these island nations, you go through passport control, baggage claim and then biosecurity. Since New Zealand is an island nation (Fiji will be the same) they take very seriously the potential for things coming into the country that might be adverse to their biosystems. 

We all cleared customs and found the host for our group from our travel agency. Her name was McKenna. Claude and I will go to Iceland in September. McKenna will be our host there as well. We also met our coach driver who would also be our guide. His name was Ray. He was Maori and very, very familiar with the North Island of New Zealand, the people and the customs. He was very friendly and would stay and visit with us at stops and sometimes have dinner with us.

We would get a brief driving tour Auckland.  It was a little rainy at the start but cleared later on.

We saw the Sky Needle which has a restaurant on the top that rotates. It also sports a zipline that goes almost straight down from the top. Ray assured us he had done it twice and it was great fun! 

He also showed us in the harbor a wheel used to open bridge. I had to be turned manually and was used for a very long time. Now they have an automated way of opening the bridge. 

We went to the top of a hill where a monument to Michael Savage was found. It also had wonderful views of the area. 

We visited Wintergarden. This is open for free to the public and it is maintained by volunteers. Such beautiful flowers. Really a nice place to visit. Outside of there was a spring which served as the first water supply for Auckland. 

Russell Crowe was born in Auckland. His family was well-known. They moved to Australia when he was young. It seems New Zealand is very happy Australia took him and claims him.

These are some of the other sites we saw in Auckland for which I have not name. 

We checked into the The Airedale Boutique Suites. We came back downstairs for a huge dinner with Michelle and her mother. We learned where we could go to get bottles of water and had a little hike after dinner to get said water. None of the hotels we stayed in had a little area near the front desk to sell snacks, food and water. There were also not any vending machines in any of the hotels in which we stayed. We are very used to that in the States. Not so in New Zealand.

Nice to be in New Zealand. Time for a good nights rest and to try to get our bodies on New Zealand time. They are 17 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.