Wellington!!!

We arrived in Wellington early yesterday morning, but to be honest with you it could have been the 32nd of never as we were so messed up with dates and times. The flight to Auckland was not as bad as I thought it would be, let me tell you Air New Zealand puts Air Canada to shame. Our Air NZ flight had personal entertainment systems in each seat, we had the choice of over a dozen films to watch, or TV shows ('Buffy' & 'Angel' included) and even some great video games to play.

As we boarded in LA we both took some happy-fun-sleepy-time pills and were soon on our way to never never land, but not before they gave us some dinner. I didn't realise how hungry I was until I wolfed down the chicken dinner and the hot buns with butter. I also tried to eat the dessert, but it was cheesecake...damn you lactose!!

Pretty soon I was dead asleep for a few hours, actually hard to tell when the entire cabin is dark, outside is dark and there was hadly any turbulance...we could have still been on the runway at LAX for all I knew. Later in the flight I woke up with startling clarity...couldn't close my eyes if I wanted to..so I plugged myself in and enjoyed 'Goodnight, and Good Luck' with George Clooney and others...not too bad a film actually.

After dozing off again I switched seats with Kathy to have the window and cabin wall to support my head (middle seats are evil). I slept a few more hours then woke again and played some golf and Tetris...then breakfast was served! Again I was starving (no idea why since I literally hadn't MOVED since my dinner), but breakfast consisted of an egg omlete with cheese covered tater tots thingys and a 1/2 tomato..I managed to scrape off the cheese from the taters and tomato and had orange juice and a tea to round out my meal. We then made our decsent into Auckland.

From what I could see of the city Auckland looks like a great little city with an amazing view of the ocean. We had very little time to make our way to the domestic flights area and catch our flight to Wellington. I was taking so many flights and going to so many cities I felt like I was on the amazing race!

Flight into Wellington was very short, less than 40 minutes I assume. The view we had coming into the city was stunning, this town is situated in a deep valley created by three bays...the entire town is on a slant, with homes and buildings built right into the valley wall and on the site of Mount Victoria.

After landing we got our rental car and made our way to the Mercure Hotel in town...let me tell you, driving on the opposite side of the car was not that hard to get used to..however driving on the opposite side of the ROAD was! More than once I had to be reminded that I was about to get into the wrong lane, or pass someone on the wrong side...it really takes some getting used to.

The time change really nailed us after we washed up and had some food, we wanted to see a bit more of the city on the beautiful sunny day we were enjoying...but all we managed to do was sleep..wake up for dinner..then fall asleep again all night.

We woke up this morning fairly early and plan on going to the Te Papa Museum, I think we're ok with the time change now...anyways..more to come! Laters!!