Advertisement
Published: November 1st 2011
All Blacks
Rugby themed AirplaneWe made it! We're in New Zealand!
The first leg of our journey was a flight to Los Angeles. Pretty uneventful in the grand scheme of things. We worked out of a puzzle book for a bit, and I tried to keep Marshall from falling asleep. The tricky part was navigating LAX. We had to find the Air New Zealand ticket counter to get boarding passes for our next two flights. FYI - it's allllllllll the way at the end. Luckily there wasn't a line to check in. We both agreed that Air New Zealand has the best ticket counter display.
We were on a Boeing 777 for our flight to Auckland. Having never been on an international flight like this before, I was pretty stoked about a free pillow, blanket, and headset (apparently, I'm easy to please). We also had individual video screens on the seats in front of us with a variety of movies and TV shows. Thank goodness, too, because that killed about half of the flight. Everyone on board was super nice, and we love hearing the accent. They even had a couple kids help pass our Halloween candy (even though we skipped the 31st when we crossed the date line).
After the movies, we both decided to get some sleep. It was about 5 hours of off-and-on napping. Not too comfortable, but better than nothing. By the time we were awake, we were only 3 hours out of Aukland!
No problems at the Aukland airport. They have a big green line painted on the sidewalk so you can find your way from the international terminal to the domestic terminal. Dummy-proof! We had a much smaller plane for our flight to Christchurch, and it looked brand new. It also had one of their new custom paint jobs supporting the All Blacks (rugby team). We also got to watch their hilarious safety video with Richard Simmons that was floating around the internet earlier this year.
We decided to take the public bus from the airport to Christchurch. In retrospect, we should have taken a shuttle, even though it's more expensive. A huge part of downtown Christchurch is closed off because they're still trying to clean up after the earthquake(s). The bus dropped us on the opposite side of the city, so we had to walk for ~45 min before we found the hostel. Finally, we could shower, unpack a bit, and brush our teeth!
As much as we're trying to resist it, we're a bit overwhelmed by the jetlag. We just need to make it to dinnertime! Hopefully, we'll have a chance to post more tomorrow, plus a few pictures.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.09s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0647s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sarah
non-member comment
You made it!
Glad to hear you're there safe and sound (and sleepy, of course)! Hope you slept well and are enjoying the sites of Christchurch!