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Published: October 30th 2008
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October 28th, 12:52pm, Vancouver international airport
Here we go again. My second contract for Celebrity cruises has finally begun as I am on my way to Auckland, New Zealand, with a short stop in LA to see Sheila, Doug, and Grandpa. For some of you reading this it will come as a little surprise that I am not headed to the solstice for the winter as I was originally destined too.
About 8 days before I was scheduled to leave for Amsterdam to join the Solstice I got an email from Celebrity saying there was a SLIGHT change in my plans for the winter and long story short I am now headed down under, back to my house from last year, the Millennium. I will be doing 14 day east and 14 day westbound runs from Auckland to Sydney all winter until April when I get to cruise home to Vancouver. It should be an interesting winter.
Check in at the airport went smoothly enough, and they didn’t even weigh my luggage, I could have taken that extra pair of jeans!! Renee and Rob dropped me off at noon and watched as I dragged all of my bags through security
almost taking out that little old man in the process!
No problem with security and I sat down to have a quick bite to seat (with LOTS of salt!! Just kidding Mom). Now I sit and wait for my plane to whisk me away to LA, the plane by the way is an E-190. What is an E-190 you ask, Boeing, nope, Airbus, nope, this thing is built in Brazil!! I hope it isn’t held together with chewing gum and chicken wire!!!
October 30th, 3:07pm, Auckland
I totally missed the 29th so no I am not on glue I missed a day when we crossed the dateline.
Ok, where to begin…The flight from Vancouver to LA was ok, the airplane was not held together with duct tape, it was actually brand new and I had my own video screen so I watched a movie.
We got to LAX on time and I was one of the first off the plane because I had a lunch date, with IN N OUT!! I met Sheila, Linda, and Grandpa Taylor out front of the terminal and Sheila put the pedal to the metal and we flew to In N out!
I
had a #3, no onions and man o man was it good! Doug showed up about 30 minutes later (I guess he got sucked back into work for a few hours a week). Thanks again everybody for lunch it was a great way to spend my last few minutes in North America.
Back to the airport and I checked in with Air New Zealand, and asked about an upgrade to premium economy class. The lovely young lady said there was space, GREAT, and for a measly $1350 I could grab a seat. I flew to Auckland in regular economy class!
I was pleased when I got on to the plane and found that there was only one other person in my row of 4 seats so I did have some spare leg room. MOVIE TIME!!! There was a huge selection of movies onboard, so I started with Indiana Jones and the crystal skull. Dinner followed movie time, I should have had the pasta because the chicken was not great, and it probably would have put me to sleep. I tried to catch some zzzz’s after dinner but I couldn’t sleep yet, so it was back to movie time. I watched
get smart, rocky, and 88 minutes; although I didn’t finish 88 minutes because I finally fell asleep (I can see your face Renee shhhhhh!).
I woke up with 2 hours left in the flight so I had breakfast (fruit plate) and watched some TV. We landed ahead of schedule which was nice. It took about an hour and half to collect my luggage and get through customs and biosecurity to exit the airport.
I grabbed a cab (a nice Holden) and I was off to downtown Auckland (on the wrong side of the road). I didn’t get to see much as the sun was not up yet, but it has the feel of Vancouver around here.
I got to the hotel at 5:30am and checked in. The hotel is very nice; it is brand new and very clean. I am about a block from Sky city, and about 4 blocks from the pier.
I went right to bed for a couple of hours until 11am at which point I got up, had a shower and tried to adjust my body to the time. I headed head for a little walkabout around town. The weather here right now is
similar to Vancouver; it is 15 and cloudy here today.
I wandered around downtown for a couple of hours, did a little shopping, grabbed lunch at burger king (it is a tradition so shuddap). There are lots of great looking restaurants around so I may try somewhere a little trendier for dinner.
I got back to the hotel and was going to go to the gym for a bit, but it is not finished yet, I told you it was a brand new hotel! So now I am going to update this and watch a movie before I go for dinner. I have two more days here so tomorrow I think I will do some sightseeing around this beautiful city.
I am going to repost this entry in private as well for a test, so make sure you can read the entry that says private at the top.
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