Departure - Monday August 27th - 2012
The day had finally arrived for our departure to Auckland from Brisbane, we left home at FKS - Little Mountain on Monday 27th Aug around 0915am as we had to be at Brisbane Airport at 1030am and knowing the Bruce H/Way the way we do for smashes and hold up's decided to head away in plenty of time to avoid any of the above. Once arrived the car was parked and all luggage loaded onto a trolly and we headed to the airport, not expecting to check in straight away so found the Air NZ counter open for just that to grea relief to get rid of the luggage as we have 2 large bags and Brian's tube of fishing rods that we had to pay excess for however these are to be donated to the National Trout Centre at Turangi therefore they won't be returning with us. Once checked in we headed off and got ourselves a coffee and filled out the departure documents ready for immigration and the boarding of the aircraft. Time had come for us to depart and it was great to actually be flying on a large aircraft - we travelled on an Air NZ 777 which was great, very comfortable and arrived into Auckland in just under 3hrs. We managed to get through customs and immigration at Auckland with no drama's and no lost luggage and made our way outside to wait for the shuttle to take us to our overnight accomodation at the Formule1 hotel. The room was small however clean and had all we needed, we did have to change rooms as the blind in the room would not stay down, I went and advised them at reception and it was no problem for them to change us - good service. Once we had got organised we went next door to a great restaurant for dinner, it was great very tasty well priced and great service. From there we headed back to our room and showered and got into bed and watched some tv, will catch up tomorrow when we leave Auckland and head toward Rotorua. Night all.
