A 5am start on a frosty Sunday morning in Palma de Mallorca… I’m the second in the shower and decide to wash my hair before we begin our epic 44 hour journey home to NZ for our holiday. 5 minutes into the shower, the water runs cold… total bummer… still have to finish shaving my legs and get the conditioner out of my hair. Not a good start.
We wheel our 20kg bags over the cobblestones in the alleyways to get to our car. We have probably woken the entire neighbourhood, but they were really too heavy to carry (we’ll apologize when we get back) and anyway, they were probably already awakened by the 20 odd drunken Germans that came past singing an hour earlier.
Larry, one of our crew members on the boat has very kindly insisted on taking us to the airport. This will be the first time he has driven in Palma…. Hope he finds his way back okay.
We get to the Palma airport and just make it to the counter in front of a busload of people all racing and pushing to get there first. Thankfully our hand luggage wasn’t weighed this time. Our checked in luggage was bang on 20kg each. Not bad. And now begins our 44 hour trip through five airports…
Palma airport (1 hour 30 min wait): horrible breakfast but good coffee; shopping poor; didn’t check for wifi
Good flight (Iberian Air, 1 hour)… we slept the whole way. Great smooth landing.
Madrid airport (4 hours 30 min wait): horrible coffee; reasonable shopping (I bought a cardigan at Mango); no free wifi
Bumpy flight (Iberian Air, 2 hours 30 min)… we dosed most of the way. Very impressive landing in bumpy weather!
London Heathrow airport, Terminal 1 (7 hour wait): very average late lunch (the waitress spilt the cider on herself and the water on me); very poor shopping (not one thing I wanted to buy); no free wifi
Long flight (Air NZ, 11 hours)... the staff were super nice and helpful, we tried to stay awake during this flights so we could sleep on the next one to get into sync with NZ time, I think I watched about 5 movies. Mostly good ones. My new noise cancelling headphones were the best buy ever for these long flights... I could actually hear everything in the movies!
Hong Kong airport (2 hours 30 min wait): pretty poor shopping... very expensive and mainly very high end brands
Another long flight (Air NZ, 10 hours)... again the staff were great. This time I tried to sleep and couldn't... I just couldn't get comfortable. It seems like there is so much less leg space between the economy seats now days. If the person in front puts their seat back, you pretty much can't move (and I'm not a big person... 5' and average build)!
10.50am Tuesday morning... we made it to Auckland with all our luggage!
Our friend picked us up from the airport and we are now settling in. I'm busy going through all my fabrics that have arrived here in my absence... so many! and they are so much nicer in person than they are in photographs! It's like Christmas for me!
We are going to try to stay awake this afternoon at least until 10pm... will see how that goes. It's nearly 3pm now and we are doing okay so far.
Ciao!
Arabella Chickie in Auckland, NZ!!!!!
1 comment:
Wow! 'Home', safe and sound! Don't you just love the world we live in today? You get on a plane in one country and get off a few hours later in another (yes, sometimes those 'few' hours are rather long, but it sure beats floating about on a huge ship for weeks).
Thanks for telling us about your trip. If you say the shopping was dismal it means one of two things. Your shopping bug is officially sated... or the shops need new buyers. If the clothing shops in Sydney are anything to go by, they need new buyers!!!!
Have fun with your new fabrics! Dying to see what you make of them :)
April Blackbird
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