We headed to the airport around lunchtime taking the light rail from downtown Seattle. First we had to get to an airport that would fly to Auckland so our first flight was to SFO. We checked in and went through security and decided to have some lunch. The place we ate in was called the Taphouse a sort of bar or microbrew place. I had prime rib sandwich with sweet potato fries which was very tasty. After that we headed down to the gate to wait for our flight which started boarding fairly quickly. This was a virgin america flight who for a buget domestic airline offer quite good inflight entertainment with movies and tv better than I’ve gotten on some international flights. I slept most of the 2 hour hop to SFO it’s a fairly short flight.
We arrived at SFO at about 7pm and then I had to get my luggage, byrnie’s was already moved along for him as he’d booked it all as one flight where as I had it as two separate return tickets one for the Seattle leg the other for the New Zealand leg. Once my bag showed up we had to get to the international terminal as we were at the Domestic. After a long walk we got to the sky train thing and rode to the international terminal and checked in. We asked the lady at the desk if we could sit next to each other so she booked us on the same row one seat apart which was slightly odd. The seat between us was apparently empty at the time (and indeed it turned out to be) but at that point there were of course no guarantees that someone wouldn’t get booked in there. After handing over my bag and verifying Byrnies had been transferred across we went through the security which took a while there seemed to be a lot of a hold up on the line I picked as they took ages to xray things. Still we got through and made our way to the gate.
Our flight was at 10pm ish and they started boarding at 9ish we found our row, which turned out to be at the front of a section next to a bulkhead, and also found the lady sitting in the other seat in the row of 4 down the middle was moving anyway. We ended up with a row of 4 seats between the two of us at the front of the block so with extra legroom. It was pretty comfortable as much as economy can be really and we settled in for the flight.
I watch a couple of films Star Trek: into the darkness which I quite enjoyed. I liked the various reversals from the previous cannon. Then I watched Iron Man 3 which was pretty fun though probably not as good as the first one not sure where it stands with the regard to the second one. They served us a dinner I had the beef which was passable then I slept a bit and woke up with two hours remaining so watched part of Oblivion and managed to get to the interesting parts just as they had us put away the screens for landing. All in all a pretty good flight all things considered.
We then had to go through immigration the guy on the desk quizzed us on our destinations throughout the trip he said “Give me 4 destinations each GO!” we are only going to 6 places so went for 3 each but he was satisfied with that and stamped our passports. After immigration we had to collect our bags and go through customs and biosecurity. New Zealand is pretty strict about Bio Security and what you can and can’t bring in anything that potentially could carry in parasites or diseases has to be declared so I declared my walking boots just in case though as it turns out they didn’t need to see them.
After that we jumped in a taxi and headed to the airport. The flight to NZ gets in quite early we were on our way to the airport at about 7am which is a bit early for check in. We got to the hotel the lobby of which is sort of tucked in between a souvenir shop and a convenience store just across the road from the Auckland tower. The guy on the desk checked but our room wasn’t ready he told us to come back at about 11am when hopefully the place would have been vacated and cleaned. So we went for breakfast.
On the taxi ride in we had spotted a Denny’s so headed over there and got them to serve us lots of coffee. I had an ultimate omelet which was pretty tasty, Byrnie had a meat lover skillet. We drank quite a lot of coffee and hung around for a chunk of time then headed out with the intention of maybe going to the cinema to kill an hour or two till we could check in. We looked a little out of place on the streets as we were still in t shirts and everyone else had at least a jumper or think coat. It was a little brisk but that’s to be expected as this is the equivalent of spring. The waiter in the Denny’s furnished us with directions and we wandered along till we located the cinema which was pretty close. It was a bit early for films the place was still closed. Luckily there was a starbucks nearby and we went in for more coffee.
Once we’d finished that we headed back to the cinema but found that the films didn’t start till 10:30 and by that time we were pretty close to the checking time we’d been give so we decided to give it a miss. We went back via a supermarket to pick up drinks and snacks. We decided to take a gamble on a beverage called L&P (lemon and paeroa) which boasted it was world famous in New Zealand. It rather disappointingly turned out to be just lemonade. The lady on the desk then arranged for us to get a room and we made our way up to see what was what.
It was a fairly small room 2 single beds a small living area it had a little kitchenette with a fridge and a microwave and a small bathroom. The tv had some odd channels including one that ran shows with Quake 3 matches circa 2001 and some old extreme sport camp thing followed by Japanese news truly a televisual feast. We were told about an upcoming game Jedi Knight 2, were treated to speculation on the lord of the rings movies, it was on a channel ironically called Now.
We didn't do much for the day playing games and reading basically doing all we could to keep awake and mostly succeeding. The internet required money to use but on logging in we discovered most of the google services on phones worked without that. We realized that they were only intercepting the web port and letting anything else just go through. Byrnie swiftly added some tor and proxies and soon we had very slow web access.
Around dinner time we decided to make use of the kitchenette and headed to the local supermarket. We grabbed various foodstuffs and discovered a UK food section complete with several different types of branston pickle, walnut whips, dib dabs, bisto, sherbert lemons, baked beans, and many others. We grabbed sandwichings (naturally with some branston) and some hot pies. I had mince and cheese, Byrnie had chicken of some description. We headed back to the hotel and had pie and salad while watching some mythbusters and futurama. We then did some more reading and gaming till it was time to sleep.
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