On the Yellow Brick Road, with a Detour to Middle Earth

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We're off to Oz, with a few days detour in Queenstown, New Zealand... Refuse to get bogged down in blogging this trip, so will format using "good thing/bad thing" for each day, which faithful blog readers will remember from our Italy trip last fall. Oh, and I promise there will be lots of photos!

Day 1/2: May 23 (and the ghost of May 24)

Sharon: Good Thing-- Binge-watching Orange Is the New Black on individual screen during flight and surprisingly good airplane coffee (though not served often enough for my needs).

Bad Thing: Spilling red wine ALL over myself while trying to shift my legs in the smallest area of leg room and narrowest seat I've ever experienced!

Dave: Good Thing: Lots of viewing selections on the plane, and Ambien!!

Bad Thing: Sitting in VERY cramped airplane seats for an extra hour and a half due to take-off delay.

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Photos

LAX toast
After 4.5 hours of travel just to get this far, here's to surviving another grueling 24 hours in transit!

View out the window while we wait...
1 1/2 hour delay to wait for more fuel since we had a heavier cargo load than expected--seriously?

Brilliant marketing
In a coup by Air New Zealand, they got the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models to make the safety video, filmed, of course, on a tropical New Zealand beach, guaranteeing the rapt attention of at least 50% of the passenger demographic!