Had a lovely breakfast at our B&B and then battled with the laptop, the internet and the blog update for a bit.  Eventually got fed up (which is why there are no pictures on here yet) and went out to explore the city.  Walked over to Auckland Museum first.  It's a pretty good museum - [...]

I wake up at 12am and then at 3.30am. I’m pretty wide awake at 3.30am but tell myself I’m not getting out of bed until it’s light. Snooze and get up at 7am. Ursula and Peter politely tell us that some buzzing insect has woken us up, but then spoil this by making comments all [...]

All of a sudden we are here! At last! Finally landing after 33 hours travelling! We complete complicated bio-hazard security forms and have to declare that we are both wearing hiking boots with (shock horror) soil attached. We are scrutinised by an impassive maori officer. Eventually we make it out of the airport and into [...]

We arrive in Japan in early morning and the rain. We’re not supposed to exit immigration but the door to connecting flights is closed. We, and numerous confused caucasian passengers, stare at the notices. It’s John who comes to rescue by tracking down a minute Japanese police officer who directs us downstairs and round the [...]

It only takes an hour and a half to get to the airport. We check into premium. A Virgin sales rep tries hard to get us to upgrade to upper class. It’s massively discounted and in a moment of madness we consider it but fortunately common sense eventually prevails. We check through the airport and [...]

It’s just taken us 3 hours to get to Mel’s so we’re panicking about the journey tomorrow. Revise our start time to 7.30am but still don’t get to bed until after midnight.