A Date with a Princess in The Land of the Long White Cloud

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An early start at 6am, as I still had some last minute packing and other things to do before our driver picked us up at 8am. All the other family members were busy doing stuff this weekend – Nat was up to her armpits with performances for the stage show, “Phantom of the Opera” that she was currently appearing in, so Justin was being Mr. Mom to their four kids at their place and, Jen was up in the Hunter Valley for a Manager’s Conference so, with all our usual taxi drivers otherwise engaged, Jen had arranged for a car and driver to pick us up and take us to the airport to catch our flight.

Brother Glenn, sister-in-law Bonnie, husband Ted and myself, were flying to Auckland today to pick up our cruise on the “Diamond Princess” tomorrow, which will be a 12-day cruise – Auckland – Tauranga – Akaroa – Dunedin – Fiordland – Hobart – Melbourne and back to Sydney.

Our driver was right on time and picked us up in a rather flash-looking 8-seater mini-van. Don’t know what make it was but was totally black and quite square-ish in shape with dark tinted windows. At first glance of it sitting in our driveway, it looked a bit like we could have been about to be escorted to the airport in an FBI staff car, to be deported or … maybe I watch too many movies or .... just have a vivid imagination. However, our driver was none of these things and gave us a very pleasant journey into the city.

We got a good run all the way into town, arriving at the airport at 8-40am, in plenty of time for our flight which was leaving at 11-45am. We’d had only had a cup of tea before leaving home, planning on having some breakfast once we arrived at the airport.

We had checked in online overnight so only had to go to bag-drop but, first had to use the check-in kiosk to get our bag tags. It only takes a few minutes whilst you place your passport face-down in a slot in the front of the kiosk and, your information is read from the micro-chip in your passport. Then you are asked a few questions relating to your booking after which, the machine prints out your baggage label. Pretty neat! Then all that is left to do is to take your bags to the baggage drop counter. We’d already printed out our boarding passes last night so, the process is quite streamlined and saves you from having to queue up to the check-in counter along with a multitude of others.

Formalities completed re check-in, we then went to find some breakfast. Glenn, Bon and I opted for some toasted muesli yoghurt with banana, strawberries and coconut pieces which was very creamy and yummy whilst Ted opted for a meatball sub from Subway.

The airport was jammed-packed with people today. In all of our years of travelling, at all hours of the day and night, I have never seen it as crowded and manic as it was today. There were people everywhere. Finding somewhere to sit down to have breakfast was one thing but, when we went to go through to departures, the queue was a mile long! – long before we even got anywhere near the doorway to go through to customs and immigration. I couldn’t work out why today was so different from any other time we have travelled. Why were there so many people? What was going on?

We did the usual cattle-crush shuffle backwards and forwards and did manage to get through passport control and immigration without too much delay but, then the fun started. The queue to get through security screening must have taken us a good 45 minutes (usually, takes around 10) but, at least the line was slowly moving most of the time.

By this stage, we still had about ¾ of an hour to go before our plane boarded, which was just as well because, it took us some time to get through screening – I had the usual hand-search of my cabin bag (again!) after what they thought was something suspicious ie cream of some sort, when in actual fact it was my loose face powder in a circular container. So, after the hand search, it was back through the x-ray machine again just to make sure.

In the meantime, Ted kept up his average of having the magic wand waved over him yet again (he always seems to be the lucky one each time we travel) to check for explosives residue and/or drugs and, we were finally through.

Looked up and saw Glenn & Bon striding purposefully back towards us (they had gotten through before we had), with worried looks on their faces. Seems Glenn had left his cabin bag somewhere.

They weren’t sure where this would have been so, a bit of mild panic set in as he raced back to security screening to see if it was there. Didn’t know if that was where he had left it or if it had been when we came through immigration and he had perhaps, put it down on the floor at the counter or, whether it had been “outside” where we’d had breakfast. Luckily, it was only back at security screening where it had been pushed to one side whilst they sent Glenn through several times because he kept setting off the scanner for some reason.

Once more on our way to find the TRS ( Tax Refund Scheme) counters to claim back the GST on Glenn & Bon’s iPad that they had recently purchased, only to find the area also jam-packed with wall-to-wall people about 10–deep back from the counters, all trying to do the same thing and claim back their taxes before they left the country. By the look of the crowd we’d have been there for a week waiting to get served.

There was a Customs and Border Control lady there to whom I spoke and luckily for us, she said that if we continued on a little further, just through duty free, there was another desk there today where you could claim your refund, so we opted for that. Smart move, for there were a few people there but nothing like the main area we had just come from. Just goes to show - it always pays to ask the question. Judging by the crowd in the airport today, guess they thought they had better have another desk available if anyone had any chance at all of making their flight. Bon filled out their paperwork and we were away again in less than 10 minutes.

It was whilst we were standing there, observing the activity going on around us, that it dawned on me why the airport was so busy today – Chinese New Year! and, judging by the multitude of Asians travelling, they were all going home to somewhere in Asia for the New Year celebrations! They certainly made up the greater portion of the travelling public today.

Our Air New Zealand flight, NZ104, was leaving from Gate 59 which, of course, was way down the other end of the terminal building so, by the time we made a pit-stop and then walked to the departure lounge (which took us about 10 minutes) we arrived just in time for the boarding call for our flight, which was chokka as well!

We had seats 48A, B, C & D which were the window, middle, aisle and aisle so, not our druthers but, as it was only going to be a short flight (2 and a half hours) across The Ditch, it really didn’t matter that much.

I was delighted to see that we were travelling on a B787 – the new Boeing DreamLiner. We had seen this aircraft in production at Boeing in Seattle back in 2010 when we went to Canada for Alan’s wedding. At the time, this was the only aircraft, the design of which, had been completely computer-generated. The fuselage and many other parts of the plane is made of carbon-fibre so, is much lighter than conventional material that has traditionally been used in the past and, as a result, also reduces fuel consumption by around 30%.

However, it was the window “shades” (or lack thereof) that I found particularly interesting and fun to play with. There are no shades that you pull down over the window anymore. Instead, this state-of-the-art aircraft has special components in the windows which allow you to press a soft panel below the window itself and, by pressing it 5 times, electronically, you can actually see the window start to darken and turn opaque and cut out the light, which happens over the space of about 30 seconds. Pretty cool! Press it 5 times again and, it reverses the process or - you can have it somewhere in between. Lots of fun to play with. This was one of the special features that the Boeing people had been telling us about when we did the factory tour back in 2010 and saw these aircraft being assembled.

All aboard and off the ground as we rapidly left Sydney behind, it was now time for lunch and a quick movie, so long as it didn’t go for more than an hour and a half, and we were preparing to land at Auckland airport. I had chosen to watch “What We Did on Holiday”, which was an hilariously funny movie, starring Billy Connolly.

Flying at 39,000 ft, we'd travelled the 2170 kms from Sydney to Auckland which took us 2 hours and 26 minutes. Was supposed to be 2 hours 40 minutes but, we’d had a tailwind which scooted us along a bit. We arrived in Auckland at 4-40pm and got through Customs etc quite painlessly. There again, the NZ government allows all NZ nationals, Canadians, US citizens and Aussies to go straight through their express arrival channels which, similar to the check-in kiosks, you do a similar thing with your passport upon arrival and stand still whilst a fixed camera takes your photo (same as when you go to get your driver’s licence renewed), to allow you entry into the country. These days, our passports all have micro-chips in them with all your info so, the machines just read that. Streamlines the process no end and we were through in no time.

We caught a taxi from the airport into the city which took us about half an hour, to arrive at the Waldorf Stadium Apartment hotel where we were staying overnight.

Jen had booked us a 2-bedroom apartment and, when we checked in, the guy on the counter told us that management had given us a complimentary upgrade into a larger “room.” Lucky us, as it was certainly quite spacious and completely self-contained. Have to love the upgrade!

We stashed our stuff and after the early start and the eventful day we had had had, wanted to put our feet up for awhile so, a leisurely cup of tea was in order with Ted volunteering to go and buy some snacks of some description and then he and Bon went out a little later to get some wine for some pre-dinner drinks before we went out to eat and also because, we had learnt that we could each take one bottle of wine onto the ship (1 bottle per person) for celebratory purposes and, as we were still celebrating Bonnie’s 60^th birthday of a few days earlier, this indeed, was to be an extra-special cruise we were about to undertake. Ted had also bought a small bottle of scotch at Sydney airport on the way out so, a couple of pre-dinner drinks before heading out a bit later on for a snack as none of us was terribly hungry.

We ended up at the local Vietnamese restaurant just around the corner from the hotel where we each had a bowl of noodle soup which arrived in a bowl that looked big enough to swim in. It was huge! Glenn & Bon opted for the chicken, I had the beef and Ted, the seafood. At $NZ11 it was great value! A small entrée of one of the best spring rolls we have ever eaten, rounded off our very tasty meal. The soup was great too. Of all Asian foods, Vietnamese food would have to be my favourite!

Back home to the hotel around 9-30pm. Tomorrow, we have a date with a Princess!

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