morning
after a morning that consisted of packing my bags (gosh, that sounds so trite… i’ve been meddling with bags of Stuff That is Mine for the past endless amount of days. i swear, no more moving. ever. unless i can consolidate all my stuff into one bag.), talking to tim, and discovering that our reservations for stay in auckland had fallen through (they emailed me last night when i couldn’t check my email anyway and said they’re full), we departed to the airport at 1:30pm, for our 4pm departure.
upon arrival to the airport and a soft pleasant goodbye from our amazing hosts (oleg’s family friends, who have kindly hosted not only him, but me as well as they would their relatives), we went to check in and discovered that our flight (with air new zealand) has been delayed to 6pm (boarding at 5:45).
this is where the good news started. (and i’m not being sarcastic!)
the flight that was delayed by 2 hours apparently on this side of the equator means that we each get a $8 voucher to spend on food and drink. KLM, which is imho a gazillion times huger gave me a $7 coupon for 5 hours of waiting, and i’ve never heard of anyone giving a voucher for 2 hours.
waiting
upon the discovery of our abudant amount of time, oleg and i proceeded to walk around the lovely sydney airport. it is not huge enough to be intimidating, but not small enough to be ugly. all of it is designed quite nicely, with smooth flowing lines of everything, and generally feeling quite awesome. high ceilings, pleasant lighting, nice arrangements, a LOT of stores, and generally nice accomodations. free internet booths, and – get this – an observation deck that’s free for access, has a bar, and is friendly towards all various addictions of a mortal human being. the observation deck looked out onto the flightrs, so you could watch take offs and landings while sipping on a beer and enjoying a sudoku puzzle from a book that you bought in the airport, of course if you bought one. (i did. i decided that i’m not spending another moment in the airport being bored, ever, even if it costs me whole $3 australia dollars!). we ate sandwiches that were given us by our hosts before departure, sipped on our coronas that were bought for the $8 coupon, and enjoyed the warm weather (its not super warm, but geez, a tshirt and a cardigan? nice!)
afterwards oleg used the free internet booth to book our stay in best western which was found for us by tim. only $10 more expensive (but not in the city, close to the airport), but its a real hotel, so we’ll at least get to relax nicely. unfortunately i didn’t get a chance to reach internet, but my laptop kept me occupied with pleasant reading and watching the first episode of firefly.
here one of many nice things of the day happened – when oleg came by to where i was sitting he found a pair of really cool ray bans that he thought were mine. since no one sat there for the past 20 minutes, i decided to give them ownership. proceed to photos of happy olya with her new sunglasses!
after some more hanging out at the area we decided to march towards security, as it turned out far too early as our flight was even later than expected – 6:30pm boarding. i used the time for walking around the airport, charging up my laptop, taking photos of myself in the new sunglasses, and doing sudoku puzzles while listening to music. fun!
the flight
upon boarding, it turned out the flight has only like 35 people, so i got a whole row of seats (3).
all of these things are nice, but air new zealand managed to impress the hell out of me with their service.
- first of all, since the flight was empty they offered us to partake in both of their meals – chicken cutlets and lamb pie. both were totally tasty and fantastic.
- when i asked for some tomato juice (my drink of choice on flights and generally lately), and some red wine i was given a choice in the kind of red wine i want. japan airlines didn’t have anything like that.
- after THAT managed to surprise me (i chose merlot by the way), they came around and gave ICE CREAM. do you KNOW how awesome that ice cream was? GENIUS. honey and kiwi and it was AWESOME.
- and after THAT they came buy with offerings of coffee and tea (again average) BUT this coffee was served with REAL milk. like none of those “this milk will not expire in the next 20 years” containers, but an actual pitcher of milk.
- and after that they came around again to offer more water.
- i think they generally were awesome – came by very quickly to collect the “rubbish” (i quote the flight attendants) that collected from the food
- to top this off, the seats were super comfortable.
so, my battery is blinking bright, i finished first episode of firefly, kinda finished typing this, and i shall shut down for now. till next time!
arrived at the hotel
the continuation of this saga is being typed from my super comfortable bed (i got the smaller one) at best western. apparently all of auckland is booked up as people in the airport RETURNED to the airport to find a place to stay. so i’m even more thankful for having a good place to sleep (and cheap too).
after landing, we fairly quickly went through customs, another xray of all our luggage to make sure that we’re not smuggling in healthy foods (only unhealthy shrink wrapped ones please), and started to figure out how to get to our hotel.
new zealand accent is THICK. like, wow. both oleg and i had very tough time understanding what anyone said! while oleg was getting his backpack into backpack condition from luggage condition, i ran outside and saw a “hotel pick up point“. after talking (where talking is from now on is asking everyone to repeat themselves at least twice – i felt SO BAD!) to the driver there it turned out we gotta call the hotel from free phones at information. talking to the hotel was fun too – eventually we all understood eachother.
oleg’s done with his shower so i’ll just forward to now. we got picked up, checked in, check out is at 10am, late checkout is at 12, and time has changed again – 2 hours forward, thus we’re losing 2 hours of sleep. blah. my body is all mad at me now: “3 days ago you told me now is morning, then a day ago you told me now is evening, and now you’re telling me its the middle of the night!”. fun!
off to the shower, then probably an episode of firefly until i fall asleep, or just falling asleep.