We made it - barely

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BLOG POST 3:

Picking up where we left off in Tokyo...  we spent four hours in the Tokyo Narita airport waiting for the second leg of our trip.  At first, not so bad, but then the tired started to kick in as it was roughly 3am Chicago time by the time our plane boarded.  To kill time, we walked the International terminal a few times - they are really big on Kit Kat candy there - all sorts of strange flavors - like green tea Kit Kat and some raspberry flavor - strange.

Anyways... big shout out to my friend Danae, who saved me from falling asleep on my feet.  Back in October, Danae was in Tokyo and I asked her to make a treasure hunt for us.  She hid notes all around the United lounge for us to find.  We found 3/4 - not too bad!  Especially since one of them involved asking a man working in a computer cube if he could check under the desk for our note - he did, and we found it - he thought it was cool.  Thanks, Danae!

So imagine we are over tired and getting ready to board the plane.  I'm talking to the desk agent to get our updated boarding passes when she asks if we have our Australia Visas.  I'm like - what visas?  11 months of planning, and somehow I missed that we need a visa for Australia, where we are stopping on the way home.  She takes our boarding passes and tells us we cannot board without visas, so with less than 15 minutes to boarding, Damon is on 3G trying to get our visas.  Then they start boarding the plane - one visa down.  They are halfway done boarding and we finally have our visas and they let us on.  Very scary close call.

Not much to say about the second flight - it was pretty miserable.  Squished between Damon and some other guy for 11 hours was rough.  We probably got in about 4-5 hours of sleep, but it was not awesome.  Flew the brand new 787-Dreamliner.  Not really impressed - thought it would be luxurious, but really no different than a regular plane, and no refreshing face spritzer in the lav.  I will say that Air New Zealand does get the gold star for their safety briefing, which is a Lord of the Rings theme and they have a bunch of the real actors showing us how to put on oxygen masks and buckle our seat belts.  Getting through Auckland airport was ridiculously easy and fast - sadly, no one stamps passports anymore.

We rented a car at the airport - I immediately try to get in the wrong side.  So strange with the steering wheel on the right.  It was humorous watching people try to get out of the parking lot.  Damon did a good job driving - we only almost got killed like once or twice.  JK.

We got to our hotel, dropped off our stuff, and went to walk around the city.  We went up in the Sky Tower to get a good look at everything and Damon terrorized a group of Japanese kids by jumping on the glass on the floor they were sitting on - you can see down 60 stories through the glass.

Jet lag started to kick in so we found a coffee shop and sat down to relax.  Within 30 seconds, man sitting by us struck up conversation, which then led an older couple to walk over and start talking to us.  People are very friendly here - although the wife was not a fan of Chicago - apparently she spent three months on a work study program in Chicago over the summer working as a librarian at the Cook County jail and was not impressed.  I mean - Cook County jail as her impression of Chicago???

We were discussing driving on the "wrong" side of the road and the husband told us that (you have to do this in a NZ accent) "oy, we tend to lose a lot tourists out here from the driving".  Apparently 1/5 accidents here involve tourists in car accidents...

Auckland is a harbor city - there is a lot of waterfront and TONS of boats - not sure what the per capita income is, but there is mega yacht after mega yacht after mega yacht.  HUGE boats everywhere.  We even saw the Vodaphone America's Cup boat parked in a slip.

Being in Auckland is not much different from the US - everything is familiar - restaurants (there is even a Denny's here), businesses, stores, even all of our tvs and movies are the same.

After a 3-hour "nap", we went out for dinner - this city wakes up in the evening - had a nice dinner on the water and called it a night.

Off to "Middle Earth" tomorrow to visit the hobbit set.