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The flight from LAX to Sydney went on, and on, and on (and on, and on, and on…) but was quite fun. Gammy slept for a long while, even missing 2nd dinner (first on this flight, considering the meal on the flight from JFK to LAX as first dinner). Actually Dotty had slept through 2nd dinner, but she had it when she woke up. I have no idea what time anything was on that flight to Sydney. The food was decent and they fed us lots: from dinner to snacks, to sandwiches on the bar between the bathrooms. Oh, speaking of bathrooms, there was an ADA accessible (or so they said) bathroom on this airplane. Let me tell you there was so much room! You could do a jig in this room. Speaking of doing a jig… at one point Gammy was dancing in the aisle with one of the male flight attendants, Darryl or I disremember the other one’s name. She had 2 of them fawning over her all night.

So back to the food. I was not impressed with the salad appetizer plate as much as the JFK flight, but the shrimp and pasta was quite lovely. I didn’t eat any of the dessert as I just wanted to sleep. (We boarded this flight at 11ish pm Los Angeles time-it had been a long day already). We all slept off and on. Woke up, ate, slept some more, woke up some more, ate some more, walked around a little bit. It was like the movie, “Groundhog’s Day” all over again.

We made it to Sydney and had a lovely lady push Gammy through all the lines and get us where we needed to be. Actually, I don’t think we had to go through security twice as our bags were checked all the way through to Auckland, but we did and it was fine. We even managed to get an Australian stamp in our passports. Dotty has now set foot on all 7 continents!

We made it to our gate for Jet Star to fly to Auckland. They started boarding way early. Thought we would leave early as well, but there was much driving around on the runway. We drove so much I thought we would actually be driving to Auckland. At one point, we even drove over the interstate or highway or whatever they call it there.

We were sitting in the exit row on the Jet Star flight and I guess since we were sitting in the exit row, we received a free $15 voucher for food. The Jet Star charges for everything. $5 for soda or coffee or tea, $12 for a beer or wine, food ranged different prices.. But they also sell postcards, blankets, pens, and other frufru stuff.

So now we make it through the Aukland airport no trouble, even with declaring boots and hiking poles. The customs/biohazard team was very friendly.

Our hotel was across the street from the airport. Easy peasy. When we went to check into the Novotel hotel, Lo’ai (pronounced Loi rhymes with boy) offered to upgrade us to the hotel next door that had just been built, The Pullman, so we obliged. The hotel is quite nice although the lobby has a lethal smell bad (some vanilla, pumpkin spice, apple….). I am sure people enjoy that as I have been in classrooms where plugins lived that had the same smell. How they got that much smell to be cloying and clinging in the good size lobby I will never know. The room is fine. The toilet is a separate room from the shower and sink and the water out of the tap is just fine.

After taking our bags up to our rooms, Dotty, Jim, and I took a little walkabout to find the shuttle for the domestic terminal for our flight today (Oct 4th, Friday). We then walked to a grocery store to buy a couple of bottles of wine, cider, and beer. So the beer they sell in this grocery store, which by the way is a Woolworths, was mostly German beer. No local stuff. Well at least not sold as single cans. I also bought a little tub of gum as the flight attendants on the flight to Sydney scared me enough about bringing in snacks and stuff that I left my gum on the plane. ( I explained that to the biohazard guy in Sydney and he told me, “Thanks, but you could have brought in your gum.”

Once back at the hotel, we settled for a bit before meeting back up for dinner. We decided not to use the 5 star rated restaurant in The Pullman, but went back to the bistro in the Novotel.

After dinner, we separated to our rooms and I don’t know what Gammy and Dotty did, I took a shower and went to bed. It was 7:30. It is now 6:02 on Friday am and I have been up off and on since 2:30. We fly out to KeriKeri airport this morning (not till 11 and we have free breakfast to eat), where we will spend 4 days in Russell, a ferry ride across from Paihia. If you have been wondering about Pony, all is well. He has been resting up from his travels and is looking forward to all the boat rides.

#HowFortunateWeAre #MakeYourOwnSunshine #TripOfALifetime #MakingMemoriesOneDayAtATime