Well, I'm home, with all the good and bad things that brings. Getting home, however, was a bit of an adventure. I had decided I wanted to stay one more night in Taupo and would then just take a bus to Auckland the next day and head straight to the airport. However, I didn't realize that there weren't any buses leaving early enough to get me to the airport in time. I wound up catching the 1:50 am bus from Taupo, arriving in Auckland around 7 am. Oh, the joys.
After stashing my luggage in the lockers at the bus station (such a wonderful thing) I decided to get breakfast and walk around Auckland for the day. It's a big city, home to almost 1.2 million of NZ's 4 million people. That said, however, I didn't see a single person on the street composing on a blackberry or talking into one of those ridiculous Bluetooth headsets.
I wandered around the main streets and people watched. And bought some more jewelry. I did not expect to like the aesthetic and design in NZ nearly as much as I did, and my fascination with the arts community came as a big surprise. My favorite store was one called Fingers, devoted entirely to contemporary NZ Jewelry. Here I found this amazing necklace composed of a the shell of a black pebble. The inside had been completely hollowed out through several round holes in the surface... think of a hollow 3-D piece of Swiss cheese. So cool.
Getting to the airport and on the plane were pretty uneventful. I had fun buying another 2 bottles of NZ wine at the duty-free shop, and then managing to shove them undetected into my luggage when I passed through customs in LA. I was lucky to have an empty middle seat in my row, and the entertainment on demand system on the Qantas 747 planes is awesome. You can play any selection you want, at any time, and can even pause and rewind it if you need to get up. I even watched a short documentary about the discovery of Penicillin. Really, it was a shame I needed to sleep on this flight.
I got blankets and a pillow, and really the customer service on the flight was excellent. The only thing definitely not up to par was my vegetarian meal; I just can't win. Last time I didn't request one and of course the entree choices were chicken and beef. I figured I should be safe when flying an Australian carrier (with their meat-based cuisine and all), so of course this time they had a fish option. I requested a regular vegetarian meal, but received a vegan one, complete with potatoes, asparagus (not so bad), tomatoes, tofu, margarine, and this vile gelatin concoction they tried to pass off as dessert. For the thousandth time I wonder why they assume vegetarians are health freaks. Breakfast was 1000 times worse: another asparagus and potato concoction with a stale bread roll, when I would have been perfectly happy with the cereal and milk they were serving. Maybe I should just take my chances from now on.
I arrived at LAX and was, for a fee, able to get on another flight leaving almost 9 hours earlier than the red-eye I was scheduled on. We had a layover at O'Hare, but I was so grateful to be getting home in time to sleep in my own bed (and see the kitties, of course). My parents met me at the security entrance with flowers (very sweet of them), and I'm pretty sure the kitties remember who I am, so all is well. Now if I could only get my body on EST!!
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