NZ: A plane Odyssey
As much as I was looking forward to visiting Kiwiland, the one thing I really dreaded was the plane journey. So far the furthest I have flown was 5 hours, the journey to NZ was 26!
For months I have been asking around for advise and what everybody said is try to sleep. As I pride myself to be able to sleep anytime, anywhere (especially at important seminars and lectures) I took this as a challenge!
The journey had two legs: London to Singapore (12 hours) and Singapore to Auckland (10 hours), with a 2.5 hour stop-over in between. I was very fortunate to fly with Singapore Airlines, and apart from the limited leg room, they are truly excellent! The food is plenty and great (in the end I had to throw away most of the extra food I took with me, which was painful!) and they had so many movies to choose from it was unbelievable! In the end I watched Adam’s Rib (a wonderful Spencer Tracy – Kathryn Hepbourn movie that I always wanted to see) and Walking the Line (a Johnny Cash biopic which has been very rightly winning most of the awards in town). During the flight I was also planning to spend some time reading the NZ guidebook but true to form I managed to sleep for a good 10ish hours so by the time I got to Auckland, I was as little informed as I was when I when I left!
After going through the passport and biosecurity control I finally arrived in sunny (very sunny!) Auckland. Blair was there to meet me and after a brief search for the car we were on our way to his flat (also affectionately known as the shoebox). After a short power nap we embarked on my first sightseeing tour of the city. We went up Mount Eden and One Tree Hill to get some amazing views of the city. Auckland is built around old volcano craters (my aunt Tina would love it!) but in contrast with any volcano craters I have seen in Greece, these are all beautifully green and full of huge trees.
Although I was surprisingly awake when I first landed in Auckland, by 8 pm only the thought of food could keep me awake! After a great dinner cooked by Blair I was out in a second!
For months I have been asking around for advise and what everybody said is try to sleep. As I pride myself to be able to sleep anytime, anywhere (especially at important seminars and lectures) I took this as a challenge!
The journey had two legs: London to Singapore (12 hours) and Singapore to Auckland (10 hours), with a 2.5 hour stop-over in between. I was very fortunate to fly with Singapore Airlines, and apart from the limited leg room, they are truly excellent! The food is plenty and great (in the end I had to throw away most of the extra food I took with me, which was painful!) and they had so many movies to choose from it was unbelievable! In the end I watched Adam’s Rib (a wonderful Spencer Tracy – Kathryn Hepbourn movie that I always wanted to see) and Walking the Line (a Johnny Cash biopic which has been very rightly winning most of the awards in town). During the flight I was also planning to spend some time reading the NZ guidebook but true to form I managed to sleep for a good 10ish hours so by the time I got to Auckland, I was as little informed as I was when I when I left!
After going through the passport and biosecurity control I finally arrived in sunny (very sunny!) Auckland. Blair was there to meet me and after a brief search for the car we were on our way to his flat (also affectionately known as the shoebox). After a short power nap we embarked on my first sightseeing tour of the city. We went up Mount Eden and One Tree Hill to get some amazing views of the city. Auckland is built around old volcano craters (my aunt Tina would love it!) but in contrast with any volcano craters I have seen in Greece, these are all beautifully green and full of huge trees.Although I was surprisingly awake when I first landed in Auckland, by 8 pm only the thought of food could keep me awake! After a great dinner cooked by Blair I was out in a second!
Labels: Travel
posted by Blair & Grigoria at 9:24 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home