After much stress and last minute preparations, we finally made it to the beginning of our journey! Our last few days were spent tying up (many) loose ends and cramming vast amounts of our belongings into our suitcases, only to find at the last minute that the luggage weight limit had been reduced. So with one suitcase overweight, we met at Auckland Airport for our fond farewells. The queue to check in was horrendously long and all attempts to be upgraded failed miserably. We ended up with seats right at the back of the plane in the centre column, but managed to secure window views for the second flight. By the time we had sorted all this out, our families were utterly bored with waiting, and had wandered off for refreshments. We did the "hang around and feel sad" thing for a while before tearing ourselves away with much weeping and many hugs (Rick won the competition for who would claim the last hug!). Annelise won the award for the best kiss of the evening when she lunged forward, mouth wide open, teeth bared, as she followed the instruction to give Aunty one last kiss :-)
Customs was remarkably efficient, although Robyn did manage to offend the officer by making snide remarks about Australians only to find he was one himself. Thankfully he was good natured enough not to let this cloud his professional judgement! So, we soon appeared at the courtyard for one last wave goodbye to the family through the windows, and Annelise once again stole the show by banging madly on the windows with her little hands and saying goodbye.
Sniffing wildly, and with great reluctance, we forged on to the restrooms to compose ourselves. Robyn indulged in some retail therapy, and couldn't resist buying a black t-shirt with the slogan, "new zealand - somewhere in the pacific", to ensure her loyalties were clearly known. After a bite of food, we headed to the gate where we went through two further security checkpoints, and were individually hand-wanded with metal detectors. Not having brought our bazookas along, we made it through okay. As our flight was delayed, we made ourselves comfortable on the floor until boarding.
Our friendly steward made conversation (and Miriam claims Robyn made conversation back while Robyn claims she was just being polite...) while we took photos of the amazing sunset (see below). Unfortunately, the on-demand entertainment system was not working for our flight, so we amused ourselves by reading, eating, chatting, and trying to sleep. The latter was not so successful! Our dinner was Mediteranean Style Braised Lamb with Risoni Pasta and Peas, which was tasty. Robyn had a hankering in the night for something savoury, and efforts to obtain anything from the galley resulted in large quantities of sweet food, which we are still consuming. The rest of the flight was uneventful, and we landed to a beautiful morning in Los Angeles...
Having arrived at the lovely suburb of Manhattan Beach, we made our way down, past the cliché roller bladers and rows of volleyball nets, to the golden sand. Amazingly, despite there being no clouds in sight, the beach was abandoned. After a nice horizontal snooze and a walk along the pier, we explored a few of the shops. Gourmet chocolates were incredibly expensive, and bagels were incredibly cheap! We returned to the airport in plenty of time, and read our books instead of making use of the variety of amusements Robyn had brought along.
