Down Under Day Five - Monday, February 10, 2014

Well ... I got up.

Sunrise over The Remarkables

Walking trail beside the lake.

Stevie and I have sworn off drinking.  Our heads hurt and our pants don't fit.  Time to slow down.  Besides, we have a flight to catch today.  But I started my day with a power walk lakeside.  What a beautiful walk.  I could do this every morning.  The sun was coming up over the Remarkables.  The trail is just gorgeous!  What a great way to start the day.  I only went 5 miles this morning, but enjoyed every step.  Such breathtaking beauty just waiting to be admired.  The photos cannot do justice to the real thing!

The Air New Zealand domestic flight was quite interesting starting with checking our bags at the terminal.  We had 'em speechless when we loaded our HEAVY bags on the belt.  Buzzers went off, employees crowded around and all hell broke loose.  We were informed that we were only allowed to check one bag and that it couldn't weigh over 23 Kilos.  My first one weighed in at 30 kilos and the second one ... that I wasn't allowed to take ... weighed much less at 29 K.   After lots of fast talking and international ticket flashing, and going through several Air New Zealand employees, I think we finally wore them down and they checked all of our bags through without penalties.

Then the fun really began on the flight.  We stuffed in to the Airbus A320 like human sausages.  This aircraft makes Southwest look like flying first class.  The Chinese guy next to me began to snore in tune with the screaming toddler two rows up.  Then the screamer started running up and down the isle, which enticed the kid 2 rows behind us to get out and play with the other screamer.  When his parents wouldn't let him out, he became screamer number 2.  I plugged in my earbuds and listened to music to block out some of the sounds of the flight.  Snoring Chinese dude woke up with a start and spilled his water all over me and then it was finally time to land.  Thank you very much!!  This was truly public transportation at it's best.

But things started looking up when we arrived at the Hotel Langham.  The folks here in Auckland sure are friendly.  We were greeted at the hotel with hugs and kisses from the doorman.  Quite sweet actually.

John said I was on his bucket list.  What the heck???

Obviously, after that flight, our vow to NOT drink didn't last long.  We checked in to the hotel and immediately found the bar - strictly for medicinal purposes.   Then we tried to get reservations for dinner at a place called "Soul," which was recommended by a woman we met on our helicopter flight to the glacier.  Soul was booked until 9:30, so we booked at Euro.  However, while walking to Euro, we stumbled upon Soul and

Stevie went in to "cash whip 'em into submission."  I must say, she's still got IT.  John seated us at a lovely table outside over looking the marina immediately.  He later stopped by our table and told us he was afraid to turn us away and that Stevie's still got it.  We're still laughing about that!!  But by golly ...  she DOES still "got it."    

Since we weren't going to drink today, we decided to have just one bottle of wine with dinner ... each!  By the way, dessert deserves a big shout out.  It was incredible!!  Described as pudding with salted caramel ice cream, it was so much more.  Here's a photo of this delectable delight.  Yum!

Valrhona Chocolate Pudding with caramel parfait, ice cream, peanut crunch and salty caramel sauce.

After dinner, we turned in for a good night's sleep before preparing to board Seabourn's Odyssey tomorrow morning for our 16 day cruise around New Zealand and over to Australia.  So excited.