I had another poor night’s sleep in our hotel room in Auckland, meaning I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since we left home on Friday. So I was very tried this morning. We slept in a little and crawled down to the hotel breakfast buffet where I just had a bowl of muesli with yoghurt.
We packed our luggage and checked out of the hotel, placing our bags in the car until we left later. Then we met up with my in-laws and they showed us around the centre of Auckland a bit, since they’d been here once before and knew the area. While they and my wife grabbed a coffee from one of the good coffee shops, I explored Albert Park and tried to see if I could spot any more interesting birds for the trip. But all I saw were blackbirds, gulls, sparrows, and pigeons.
Rejoining the others, we walked down to the waterfront area to see what it looked like during the day (after last night’s dinner at the restaurant there). My wife checked out a large souvenir shop while I looked for nearby light lunch options. We needed to eat something before leaving for the airport, but it wasn’t really time for a full lunch. I found a place that does focaccia style pizzas by the slice and grabbed a pepperoni slice, while my wife got a toasted bagel with cream cheese from the shop next door.
Then we headed back to the car park to take the car back to the airport and drop it off at the rental place. We navigated first to a petrol station near the airport to fill up the tank before dropping it off. Once dropped off, we used the shuttle bus to get to the terminal.
We went in through security and passport control and then had some time to kill, extended a bit as our flight was delayed by 20 minutes. Boarding was long and slow because the flight was very full, and it was a single aisle Boeing 737. They also took some passengers’ larger carry-on bags and forced them to check them into the cargo hold. Fortunately they didn’t target us, and we managed to find space in the overhead lockers neat our seats for our bags.
The flight was again fairly short. They provided a dinner meal and I watched two more episode of House of the Dragon. I’m enjoying the series, but I won’t have any easy way to watch any more of it, unfortunately.
We landed at 18:01 Sydney time. Luckily there were no queues at customs and immigration, so we were out of the airport and on a train home very quickly, and walked in the front door just after 19:00. We decided to have a light meal before heading off to pick up Scully from our friends’ place, so I fried some eggs to have on toast. Then we drove over to pick up Scully, who was super excited to see us as usual.
Now we’re back home, and I’ve had a shower to freshen up before bed. Hopefully to sleep well tonight!