Oct 7 Greetings from Sydney

Thursday 6th October 2022

Christchurch threatened to put a spanner in our plans with snow forecast for Wed/Thu, but very little snow actually arrived. The impact was delayed flights all day Thursday culminating in an almost 2 hour delay for us heading to Auckland. However we had (thankfully) factored that in by booking to come up the day before the international leg. Arrived at Motupapa just after 1am.

Friday 7th October 2022

Negotiated a 9.30am departure with Dad, and managed a quick catch-up with Alyssa, Nick and Elliot in the morning. The traffic was not too bad, couple of delays but nothing major and we got to the airport about 1.30 - plenty of time for a 4.10pm departure! We discovered that international airports require a lot of walking (up and down the queuing aisles, plus the whole thing just generally being really spread out). Security seemed very officious and not particularly efficient. Dad, who didn't even have carry-on, just a pair of glasses and a wallet, ended up having to wait the longest in order to have the metal pen in his glasses case checked out to ensure it was actually a pen. Having made it through security on foot, and with all of the Duty Free area plus shops plus gates to come, Peter went out to check the distance to the lunch options and ended up tracking down a wheelchair. As it turns out, they tend to hang out near departure gates, and can just be casually collected by an interested passerby. When he returned I asked if he thought he could get us another one, which he duly did! The distances obviously managed to convince even Mum to take a load off and we subsequently zipped and zoomed around at will. We were able to take the wheelchairs right up to the gate which was great. Mum and Dad were seated a few rows back from us on the plane. Flight was uneventful, really nice service, good food, and it passed quite quickly.

Arriving in Australia, we decided to start by seeking out a wheelchair again, expecting the distances to be significant. Dad and Peter ended up on one of the motorised units with a couple of other people, while Mum and I walked. The invention of e-passports has certainly streamlined the immigration process, and most of the process happens without interacting with a human.

Cases gathered, customs cleared, we were unable to do a freecall to the hotel shuttle on a NZ mobile phone, so made our first bad tourist decision to 'just take a taxi'. Yeah so we won't be doing that again :) But he did get us to the hotel, so can't complain tooooo much. Peter went out on a mission to find weetbix and milk for breakfast (and midnight snacks) and something plain and boring for tea. Mission accomplished in fairly short order and we sat and chatted over dinner.

All gone smoothly so far - no dramas to date, no major pieces missing or important plans unmade. Long may that continue. Sydney is forecast to be lining up tornados and floods, but hoping we will be able to avoid this by flying towards a tiny rock in the middle of the ocean.