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The long journey


This post was published on Thursday 3 January 2019.

The holiday began with approximately 30 hours of packing and sorting... split by the London fireworks in the middle.

We stopped off at the house of Ben’s Aunty Mary and Uncle Trevor - who kindly gave us a lift to the airport. This monster is what awaited us...

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The A380-800 which carried us to Singapore.
A departure lounge selfie at Heathrow

We enjoyed both flights with Singapore Airlines - they lived up to their reputation. The food was surprisingly tasty, too - and even us plebs in economy were given a menu sheet so we knew a) what we would be served and b) what we could ask for if we got hungry in between! There was almost no turbulence on the first flight, and not much more on the second.

By the end of the second flight we were both ready to stop flying - having been in the air for 23 of the previous 26 hours - but in between we had stopped off at Changi Airport in Singapore. It has a butterfly garden, a free cinema, a snooze zone, and a rumoured rooftop swimming pool - though we didn’t find it. It is carpeted throughout, and the smell from the food hall was incredible.

Eventually we landed in Auckland, and even the infamous biodiversity customs agents couldn’t dent our spirits - though hugely sleep-deprived, we were simply happy to have finally arrived! Thankfully they didn’t make us throw anything away, though they did disinfect the soles of Ben’s walking boots.

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Next step... collect the campervan...

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