Off to Auckland! - 12/13/2007

On Thursday morning, Will and I packed up our stuff and checked out of the Westin Sydney (boo…), hopping in a cab to Sydney airport and en route to Auckland. We quickly discovered that the Air New Zealand lounge is tremendously better than the United Airlines lounge (lucky me, still riding on the coattails of Will’s status…), where we dined on some yummy breakfast croissant sandwiches before our flight boarded.

The flight was shorter than I expected (under 4 hours), and other than the intriguing beef salad snack (it was exactly as it sounds), the only other highlight was that we watched a movie called “The Ultimate Gift”, which was ill-timed and they shut it off with less than a few minutes to go (or at least we think it was almost finished). Painful, now I’m totally curious how that movie truly ends and I don’t want to have to watch the whole thing again.

When we landed, it was pretty quiet and we rolled through customs quickly (they cleaned our mountain bike shoes for us…thanks!) and met up with Tolcher, who picked us up (yay for friends when traveling!). Tolch drove us to his place in the Westmere district of Auckland, just in time to meet up with Alex, who got home from work around the same time. We enjoyed a beer on their awesome deck and took a quick walk down to the water (Meola reef).

For dinner, Alex whipped up an awesome pasta dish with shrimp and peas, as well as a yummy avocado, orange zest and fennel salad. Yum!



There may have been a couple bottles of wine and lots of catch up talk, it’s so great to spend time with Tolcher and Alex! Hooray for friends and travels!