We arrived in Auckland at 7:00am local time (8:00pm Wednesday 7th July in UK). It felt strange that only 26 hours previously I had been on the phone at heathrow gate saying a final goodbye to M&D...so much time seemed to have passed since then, and I was on the other side of the world. I had no understanding of time, I couldn't tell you what time it felt like, it didn't feel like early morning, or evening. It felt like limbo.
Customs staff were so friendly - they had a nice chat with us and waved us through with huge smiles - a much nicer welcome then the stone cold faces at Heathrow immigration. After passport control you picked up your bags and then went through Biosecurity - we were out of the aiport within a half hour, and on a bus to Auckland city centre.
We arrived at Rydges Hotel Auckland at around 8:45am local time, by this time I had been up for approx 34 out of a 36hour time period. The hotel kindly let us check in (very) early and we dropped our bags, had a quick shower and went off to explore and try to ignore the jetlag. That morning feel's very surreal looking back, but was really lovely while living it. We went down to Auckland harbour and grabbed a coffee and waffle for breakfast - the harbour looked beautiful with sunshine sparkling on it. One of the first things that hit us when arriving in Auckland was how cold it was; it was winter so only about 10C so we huddled up in (ski) jackets and enjoyed the crisp winter morning. The sky in Auckland is beautiful, almost silver in colour, and there is so much of it - in big UK cities, skyscrapers mask your view the majority of the time and create a grey atmosphere with dots of sky here and there. Auckland's highest building was the Sky Tower which towered above the rest of the skyline, but in comparison to UK buildings was really not that tall.
(Matt at Breakfast)We pottered around Auckland for a few more hours, exploring little parks (with autumn leaves which felt VERY weird - having j
ust come from summer) finding Auckland Uni (nestled right in the city center) and looking at palm trees in winter?! At around 1pm local time, having been up for 38hours out of 40 we began to start crashing. With lack of sleep I became quite dis-orientated and confused. We made our way back to the hotel and slept till 6pm when we tried to wake ourselves up for a few hours, but the call for sleep was too strong and by 8pm we were fast asleep once more. We woke up around 3/4am the next morning, and spent the morning snuggled in a comfy bed, watching weird NZ cross 
Australian TV.
No comments:
Post a Comment