Judencharlie's travel blogs:
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We begin! We're on our way
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Well, sitting at Auckland and thinking about the events thus far, can't help laughing at how we ran around like a couple of idiots at the last minute, having sworn all along that we would not do that! Every time we go away, we are exhausted by the time we get where we are going coz we have rushed around trying to get things in order. Cleaning, packing, paying bills and blah blah blah. So, what happens? Again we are in the same boat having to organize ourselves with heaps to do. Night before we only managed to get to bed at 1.00 am and then up early in the morning to get ourselves organised and down to the hotel at the airport. Hopeless! Again this time, we have promised outselves that is the last time we allow ourselves to have heaps to do at the last minute.
That being said though, leading up to this trip, it has been a nightmare. Jude has been away every week, and then for me, financial year end so having to get the budget through as well as the semester plan. I've been doing 12/14 hour days of late so I guess we both have an excuse for not being ready!
So, we did the same thing as we always do which is to head off to the Mercure Hotel at Sydney Airport the night before. We did manage to get there earlier than in the past so I guess we had improved on previous years. It was good actually because we took ourselves off for rather a pleasant walk before dinner. It was fabulous. Dinner at the rowing club - as we always do in the evening and then return to the hotel for an early night. Gosh we were totally wasted.
But what a start to our trip this morning! When we arrived at the airport to check in, we discovered that the baggage belts had broken down and they were stacking the bags in a heap next to the check-in desks, and because of the breakdown, there were five flights before ours before they would even think about checking us in. Not to worry - coffee and breakfast really seemed like a good idea! Hey, what can you do? You can't do anything about it so might as well kick back and enjoy the experience! Eventually of course we got ourselves checked in and our bags ended up on the heap as well so all we could do was just pray they got onto the plane when we did!
But hey, all things did not necessarily appear smooth. We had our early morning cup of coffee and then pulled out the cards to fill in the exit information. Lo and behold, where the heck is Lynne's passport? Can't explain to you the panic stations. And for the first time ever, Lynne had not done her usual obsessive compulsive acts of checking, checking and rechecking. Look what happened. There were all these visions rushing through our minds of us having to go back home to pick it up but then, when would we get on another flight and also all the hotel bookins would be thrown out including the pre-arranged visits. What a moment we had there. Fortunately though, we discovered the passport had actually slid out of the travel wallet down to the bottom of my bag. Whew! You can imagine the panic though! The one good thing about it, it taught us a valuable lesson - get zippered travel wallets! Imagine it falling out in the street or something - not that we carry our travel wallets in the street but hey ... we think it is a good lesson.
We ended up being delayed in getting onto the flight. Firstly, because the baggage belts broke down and all the airlines had to stack all the baggage and take it down manually, but also the inbound flight had been delayed so our boarding was delayed even further. Once on board we sat and sat on the tarmac while they had to find all the bags! A good tailwind though saw us arriving in Auckland with about 2 hours layover instead of the 3. Not a problem. All part of the experience. Actually, can't complain at all about Air Newzealand. Their service is faultless. They really do know how to look after the passengers..
Well, shall sign off for the moment. Will try and put some words together tomorrow at San Francisco.
Where I stayed:
Mercure Hotel, Sydney Airport
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