No matter how prepared I am, no matter what time of day or night we leave, I don't sleep the night before a flight. As we were being collected at 6.30am on Thursday 9 April for our trip to the International Airport, I was wide awake and ready to roll well before dawn.
How to get four people, including a child needing a seat + a mountain of luggage to the airport proved to be a challenge in itself.
Being early, I didn't want to ask my ever helpful and obliging parents (just as well as it turned out Dad needed a root canal or some other yucky sounding dental thing done early that morning so he wouldn't have been available anyway), driving ourselves and parking for 2 weeks would have cost nearly A$200, a taxi wouldn't fit all our stuff, a maxi-taxi won't guarantee their arrival time as disabled clients take priority (and rightly so I say!) so our option was a private transfer. And I found:
http://www.luxinblack.com/What a way to travel! Magnificent van and driver (John) , perfectly on time, help unloading at the airport - we couldn't have asked for more. When we were flying home, Georgia asked 'John pick us up in his van?'. She's obviously decided John is her preferred mode of travel on airport commutes from now on. Can't say I blame her.
Accompanying us on our New Zealand excursion was the ever marvellous Mrs Nic. Known as Nicole to the rest of the universe. Our children love Nic, she seems to enjoy them too and our friendship with her and husband Craig stretches back nearly a decade. As Craig is currently on assignment in the USA, Nic volunteered to come travelling with us to be our extra set of hands. What a woman! I know that there is a real St Nic and I'm so lucky that she's my friend :)
So we all checked in, loaded off oversize baggage (stroller and car seat), did the Customs thing, walked a mile or two or three to the departure gate (yes, it was the second last gate at the airport and the walk from the Duty Free Shops/food outlets to the gate took 7 minutes - I know - I did that walk three times) and waited for the plane.
Flights aren't overly fun for most people but a fuller than full flight and two very exuberant children isn't my idea of a fun way to start the day. After flying over lots of beautiful snow capped mountains as we crossed New Zealand, when we landed in Christchurch things degenerated from bad to worse as Georgia had just had enough. So getting her through Immigration and Customs involved a lot of screaming (from her although I was tempted to join in), crying (still her although I was thinking about it) and tantrums.
Thank goodness New Zealand realises that travelling with munchkins is a challenge and has an express lane for people with children. LOVE IT! The staff were superb in trying to assist us, bringing her a drink, holding her hand and trying to talk to her while other staff whisked us through and told us to bypass the exit line, which we happily did, to get us out of there as soon as they could.
Picked up hire car, fitted all baggage and people into van, found the very comfy and super clean motel (
http://www.riccartonmallmotel.co.nz/) and went straight across the road to McDonald's where they have a huge and amazing indoor play centre. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!
Nic and I had to test out the shopping so we went into the Riccarton Mall to buy groceries. Yes, after we did a lap of the specialty shops and decided that shopping in NZ is very like shopping in Australia. Not a lot of difference in stock.
We found Pak'Nsave and oh how we loved that place. Nic exclaimed 'It is just like a Bunnings - BUT FOR FOOD!!!'. We had far too much fun, went back to McD's to collect Luke and the munchkins and fell into bed.
Uncle Steve who visited Christchurch last year and gave us a list of what to see that was child-friendly. As always, they were so right!
