Hilton Auckland, North Island, New ZealandÂ
Greetings from Auckland, the metropolitan center of New Zealand, where we landed several hours ago. Our day began early in the morning at Adelaide Airport, where we arrived three and a half hours prior to takeoff. We have found that with 3 kids, a double stroller, 3 car seats, 6 pieces of luggage, 4 carry-on bags, and 5 passports, it usually takes the check in person 30 minutes at least just to get us checked-in to the flight. Then security, immigration, diaper changes here, Ron to the toilet there, and we are almost out of time…
The 4 and a half hour from Adelaide was eventless, the kids were pretty well behaved. We lost 2 and half hours due to time-zone changes, and landed in the late afternoon. All of our luggage arrived, and we were ready to depart the airport. In New Zealand, an additional step, aside from immigration and customs, is a bio-hazard check. This country is very strict about foreign bugs harming the local eco-systems. You are not allowed to bring in any food, leather products, sea shells, and anything that may be a vessel of evil germs.
We got to the hotel, in a great location downtown, just as the sun was setting. The view from the balcony was very impressive. We’ll be here for two nights before reverting to our default mode of living – a rental motor home. The room here is very nice, Paola wishes we could stay for a few more days.
We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, White, very chic and tasty chow. It’s now after 11pm and Shir and Orr are driving us nuts. I wish they would go to sleep already. They had their nap on the plane, we didn’t.
I hope tomorrow we will meet some real kiwis (New Zealand locals). So far today, we have not met a single one. At the airport, the immigration officer was Asian. The bio-hazard inspector was East European. Our taxi driver was a Sikh from Punjab. The hotel receptionist was Chinese. The waitresses at the restaurant were from Germany and Ireland. And the couple dining next to us were from Denmark.
Tomorrow we hit the streets of Auckland! Good night,
-Hemi
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 4:00 am and is filed under Big Trip, New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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