Planes that think they're zebras

Hello all! It is 6:30 PM on the 25th here in Auckland, NZ. Yes, we made it safely and all is well. Sigh of relief, right? Right now we're resting in our window-less hostel room at Backpacker Nomads on Queen Street. I have so much to say, but a lot of it is blurring together from a lack of good sleep over the past week. Tonight will be our first night where we can lay down flat and bend our legs in four nights. No more stiff "recliners"! Hurrah! The plane was cramped, but it was still so nice. Very high-tech plane (minus WiFi). There were hundreds of movie choices on the back of someone else's chair (watched most of Monster's University, a few NZ documentaries, and part of the extended edition Hobbit...which we fell asleep to). The best thing, other than getting across the world in 12 hours via the sky, was the food. Wow. I had a Moroccan chicken with cous-cous and Stacy had braised beef with vegetables or something... it was good. And cheese omelettes and potatoes for breakfast at 5 AM!

Anyway, run-on paragraph aside... our plane was zebra-striped, we found out this morning. That was neat.

I took a few low-quality photos from the plane this morning too..

I flipped out.

First halfway decent picture taken upon landing

The ride was great. Yes. I had my minor (Stacy will say otherwise) moment of "panic" as we were zipping down the runway towards the sky...but, it was great. Really. I even played tetris on the back of a some guy's chair. 

Customs in NZ are strict. Not China-style strict, according to Stacy, but still strict. They want to make sure you don't bring anything sketchy into the country. For example. Apples? $400 fine. Noticeable dirt on any shoes, whether on you or in your bag, $400 fine. Okay, that sounds far-fetched. Stacy said they would make you clean them, never mind. Still. But all went smoothly. Or should I say, everything went fine.

We bought a phone in the airport rather promptly. Waited around for a few hours (we arrived at 7AM, and couldn't check in at our hostel till 2PM), using our free 30 minute allotments of WiFi on different devices to get our bearings, figure out GPS stuff and well.. killing time. 

Needless to say, we walked around Auckland a good bit while waiting too, and I'm just gonna upload a handful of pics now... I might get a tumblr to focus on pictures and just link to that. Hm hm. Thanks guys. :]

 

Beard. Reference this in 6 months.