We're homeward bound today. It was an early start to what was going to be a very long trip down-under. We left the apartment just before 7am and caught the airport bus just 10 minutes later. With a 30-minute ride to the airport, we were there in good time to confirm the weight of our bags and get them checked in. Our route would take us from Prague to Frankfurt, Houston, Auckland and finally on to Nelson.
The first leg of our trip took us on the short 70-minute flight to Frankfurt. Our bags were checked through to Houston but we were recommended to go to the United desk at Frankfurt to pick up the boarding pass for the final flight from Houston to Auckland. The woman manning the desk told us we couldn't pick up the boarding pass until Houston, not Frankfurt, however she noted that my Frankfurt boarding pass had SSSS written on it. This meant I had to go to another booth and get a full explosive check done, down to getting my feet swabbed. It was a little nerve-wracking but I passed the test, got the appropriate stamp and could then proceed through to the departure gate.
The United flight from Frankfurt to Houston took 10.5 hours and it went pretty well. We both watched a few movies, then tried to catch some sleep, John being more successful than I. After being 40 minutes late taking off, we landed at Houston only about 10 minutes late. Our transfer was always going to be tight, with just 1hr 50 minutes before our onward flight to Auckland. What we hadn't realised when we booked our flights (and that United hadn't told us) was that we had to collect our bags again and go through the full immigration and custom procedures, before re-checking our bags, going through security, and getting to the next terminal for our Air NZ flight.
It threatened to be a daunting transit from the outset. However, it turned out to be a very frustrating and unpleasant experience. We were near the back of the plane so were already running well behind our required timing before we even got off the plane. From the moment we finally got off we were running. With no separate processing for passengers in-transit, as opposed to those properly entering the USA, we had to contend with a long and slow queue to get to the 2 immigration booths that were open. Each person's questioning took forever while time ticked away. By the time we had been photographed and our passports stamped, boarding for our flight had supposedly already started, and we hadn't even collected our bags from the previous flight.
Back on the run to collect our bags,and drag them to the bag drop off. A nasty officious man chose us to shout at to put them through a scanner before we could drop them off. Off again we stumbled across the bag drop area, and unhelpful men took our bags. We didn't expect them to be loaded onto our flight in time because we were now three-quarters of an hour past the cut-off time for bags to be dropped off. By now we had pretty much resigned ourselves that there was no way the bags would get on our flight, and most likely we wouldn't either. It wasn't much fun.
We then were off to security screening. Here we had to contend with toxic officers overseeing the screening queues. Off running again to Terminal D from our current terminal C. Thankfully, the two were in the same building - the only thing in the whole transfer process that went our way - and we made our way to D10 boarding gate and arrived puffing and sweating at the desk under 10 minutes from departure. To our marked relief the departure lounge was still full of people, even though the flight was due to have left in under 10 minutes. We were fine. The nice guy on the desk quickly issued our boarding passes and informed us that the flight was delayed for 15 minutes while they waited for the cabin crew. What a relief. We didn't think we had a hope of catching the flight.
In the end the flight was an hour late leaving, but we didn't care. We were on it! With 14.5 hours ahead of us, we settled into trying to sleep as soon as the meal was served. We'd paid the small amount of extra money to be in a row with extra legroom and it was definitely a good move. We could stretch out and we both slept or dozed for quite a few hours. The flight went really well and the time actually seemed to go remarkably quickly. Before we knew it we were starting our descent into Auckland. Arriving at 6am, we had been 36 hours on the move.
Nic had alerted us that we might meet up with Carmen and her partner at Auckland airport. Carmen was the Spanish au-pair for Bella and Nic's three children when they lived in Melbourne. They were coming to visit them for four days and were on the same flight to Nelson as us. We got to know each other over a coffee, and after the flight, we were all met by Bella and Nic at Nelson airport. It was wonderful to give them a big hug and be welcomed home. They dropped us at our place, where we did a bit of unpacking and then scouted out to the supermarket to buy some fresh food. A little later in the day we drove around to Bella and Nic's and received a lovely welcome from the three kiddies who were all home for school. A lovely lazy pizza meal and a glass of wine rounded off the day, but we were fading by 7pm so headed home to bed and a big sleep catch-up.
