After many other front runners for titles including, “A bird pooped on me,” and “You’re going to run out of space on your camera on our first day.” I settled with statistics for this because…

Our flight was scheduled to be 13 hours and 9 minutes and have us arrive at 5:25 a.m. However, our flight was 13 hours and 10 minutes and we landed at 4:55 a.m.

We are roughly 7 thousand miles from home with a time difference of plus 21 hours.

We left at 6:30 on Thursday, Dec. 26 and arrived on Saturday, Dec. 28. Friday just didn’t happen for us.

Today we walked 10 miles or 24,691 steps.

And this will be a very long blog to start off our journey, buckle in!

I’ll start with our flight. Thanks to Aly who braved Boxing Day traffic to drop us off at the airport. We so appreciate it! After a stop-and-go battle through traffic to get to the airport we arrived and breezed through security to arrive at our gate 2 hours early. We sadly did not get the upgrade we bid on, but we had a friendly person in our third seat. Her name was Jessica and she had traveled from Toronto and was off to visit her boyfriend who lives in New Zealand.

Jacob and I watched a movie and some shows together. We got dinner a few hours into the flight. Jacob had braised beef and I had the chicken with couscous. Then it was time to try and nap. Jacob passed out quickly but I couldn’t get to sleep. I watched a few kids movies but about that point we kept hitting turbulence. And there is nothing more thrilling than turbulence at 40,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean. It was about then that I decided it was time for a happy anti-flight anxiety pill. That did the trick and I was able to get a few hours of sleep. Then the crew came through with breakfast which included a sausage omelet and yogurt. Yum!

During the flight we made sure to get up and walk around a lot and to drink lots of water. Last time we flew, we didn’t do so great with staying hydrated and Jacob had an awful cramp. Hoping to avoid that this time!

Looking back, I think because we had prepared ourselves that this was going to be a long, long, boring, awful flight – it made it not so bad. The service on the airline was great too!

But enough of that, I’m sure you want to hear about our exciting customs experience! After exiting the plane and wandering through the perfume-filled duty-free shops we ended up in customs. We had paper arrival cards we needed to fill out, but no pen. I ended up asking a cashier to borrow her pen and then we filled out the cards very tediously. Meanwhile, Jacob noticed there was a section for ePassports but he wasn’t sure if we could do that. For ePassports people just had to walk up to a machine, scan their passport, stand for a photo and go. After much debate, we ended up in the very long and slow-moving customs line. At some point during our wait Jacob said he was worried our checked bag wouldn’t be there by the time we got through. That hadn’t even occurred to me! Now all I could think was dang it! Our very meticulously packed luggage is now being stolen or disappearing to who knows where!?

And this was after yesterday when we were going through security and Jacob got pulled aside for a second screening, because he always gets pulled for a second screening and I grabbed the laptop and the iPad for him and stood off to the side. Then he said, “where’s my phone!?” Don’t worry! It was still in the bin, but you can see we have been off to a great start!

Anyway, back to customs. We finally got through the line and ran to baggage claim to find out that sure enough our baggage was no longer there but that we should check in with baggage services. And sitting there all by its lonesome self was our bag waiting for us. After baggage claim we went through a bio-hazard check to make sure we weren’t packing along any fruit with stinkbugs to New Zealand. By this point we had been at the airport for two hours.

Once we were finally done with all the checkpoints, we grabbed a few snacks and called our hotel for the shuttle service to come pick us up. At this point it had started to rain and Jacob said he must have brought it with him. We arrived to our hotel just after 7 a.m. We changed our clothes and freshened up a bit. I got a cup of coffee and we checked in our bags. From here we needed to figure out how we were going to get into downtown Auckland which was 15 miles away. I asked the staff at the hotel what they suggested and they said we should order a taxi. So we did and the driver was lovely and he dropped us off right downtown.

By this point the sun decided it wanted to come out, but when we left our hotel it was raining so do you think I packed our sunscreen or my hat? No.

Yes, we got sun-burnt on our first day. But it’s not as bad as it could have been. Even though my mother sent us with two travel tubes of sunscreen I totally forgot them at the hotel so we ended up buying a bottle of 50 spf while we were out and lathering up. We are pink but it could have been worse. We will be much more diligent from now on.

Once we got downtown, we purchased ferry tickets to take the ferry to Devonport. This was a beautiful 12-minute ferry ride. Once we got off we walked around and walked to the top of Mount Victoria. We stopped along the hike to enjoy some snacks and take in the sites. It is so beautiful here! While we were walking around there, we ran into a woman from California who offered to take our photo. She said it was Christmas photo material.

After our walk we went back to the dock and ate some fish and chips. It was so yummy! I have no idea what kind of fish it was but it filled me up. We caught the ferry back to downtown Auckland and grabbed a seat on the top of the boat to take in the views. It was so breezy up there I could barely stand up.

From there we wandered to a few parks, got lost a few times. Sat on some park benches and were surrounded by birds, which led to me being pooped on by a bird. I had to use the toilet at one of the parks and got stuck inside the stall for a while unable to get out. I was about to start screaming for help when I finally shoulder chucked it open.

I would go into more detail but its been a very long past 36 hours and I am very much ready for bed! We have had a wonderful stay in New Zealand. Everyone we have interacted with has been incredibly friendly. Tomorrow we have a flight in the morning to Sydney, only 3.5 hours. That will be a breeze! Then we will be in Sydney for five nights.

Until then!

Post update:

I wanted to add a few more thoughts to this post now that I am well rested! I mentioned that we took a cab to downtown Auckland but I didn’t say how we got back to our hotel. We used a series of trains and buses, then a short walk to get back. In Auckland, you can’t just buy a day pass for transit, you have to buy a pass for $10 and then add money to it. You can however buy a pass for one-way trips. The last park we visited for the day was the Auckland Domain which is a large city park in a volcanic crater. It was a beautiful park with a duck pond and rolling green fields. At the top of a hill was a war memorial and museum.

Past the museum, we walked through an abandoned parking lot which was a little creepy to the train station we needed. We bought our tickets but had to be buzzed through the gates. However, the person working the gate was a little oblivious to our existence so I had to say, excuse me a few times. 🙂 From there it was an easy train ride to the bus which we would take to get to our hotel. When we arrived at the bus station multiple staff members asked if we needed help and were so kind and friendly. I really appreciated this about our time in New Zealand. Everyone we talked to was so kind.