Travel Report #1
Well, we made it to Wellington! After a week in Hawaii, a long flight down under, a night in Sydney Australia, another day of dragging luggage through airports, two nights in a fancy bed & breakfast on the outskirts of Wellington, half a week in a hostel on a crappy bed, we finally found and moved into our new apartment.
It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Hawaii is amazingly beautiful. We were staying in the very touristy Waikiki but rented a jeep so we could explore the island of Oahu. That's the way to do it. We were our own tour guides, and did quite a good job if I do say so myself. Hawaii was great but all we could think of was our soon to be new home.
After our week in paradise, we boarded our plane to Australia and waved good-bye to the U-S-of-A. The ten hour daytime flight flew by, no pun intended. I think the fact that I didn't try to sleep and just kept myself busy reading, watching my video iPod, and playing DS help. Most flights I try to sleep during and I think with all the waking up that happens it makes a flight seem longer.
Anyway, we arrived in Sydney, had to uncheck our checked baggage, and drag them to our hotel for the night. After a quick night sleep, we went back to the airport, had to recheck our luggage, and hop on our next flight to Auckland, New Zealand. I was a short 3-hour flight and I barely remember it next to our 10-hour one.
What we didn't know prior to this trip was that every time we flew into a new country we had to uncheck our checked bags, run them through customs then recheck them again. We arrived in Auckland where we only had 1 hour until our next flight — thank you very much, Orbitz. The only reason this was a big deal for us was because we were carrying what we need to last us at least a year which was crammed into three giant suitcase, two L. L. Bean backpacks on our backs, Rachel's carry on, and my beloved Wii laptop bag (thank you very much Daniel Kayser). So, with all this stuff, we waited in a huge customs line, and then had to run from the international terminal to the domestic one where we recheck most of our stuff with only about 10 minutes to get on our final flight.
The flight from Auckland to Wellington was under an hour. Most of the flight was spent reveling in the fact that we were almost there — our journey was almost over. We landed and for once didn't have to go through customs! We calmly got our luggage, found a taxi, and found ourselves an incredibly relaxing bed and breakfast over looking part of the Wellington Bay. We basically had our own little studio apartment off the side of these really nice people's home.
After two tranquil nights spent in a beautiful Wellington suburb we proceeded to our hostel near the center of Wellington. It was nice for a hostel but I think we were just getting tired of living out of our suitcases. That and the miserable excuse for the bed didn't help.
Outside of that, the city is fantastic. It has all the makings of a city but is extraordinarily green. Everyone is ultra-friendly and loves to talk. We are having some trouble understanding people at times. It's not too bad, but sometimes they talk so fast we have a hard time keeping up.
Once we got our cell phones working down here we starting hitting the apartment scene hard. We decided to sacrifice space for a newer better-kept apartment. After only about 3 days of intense hiking about the city and internet digging we found one we really liked. A few hours after viewing it, we got a call back saying we could have. The very next day we went to sign the lease and moved in hours later.
It felt so good to leave the hostel for what will be our last stop for a while. The past few days hasn't really let up for much rest yet. We've been walking all over town trying to put together our apartment. We ordered a bed at one store, it'll hopefully be here within the week, ordered a couch at another, that came Saturday, we found an Office Max and ordered a computer desk and chair, we found a hardware store and built this whole wardrobe thingy. Slowly but surely our apartment is coming together. The less we have to spend walking around looking for things and actually in it, the more it feels like home.
