It just struck me as interesting. It’s Cruise Port not Cruiseport and Airport not Air Port. I know, I know, we drive on parkways and park on driveways.
Dawn Princess arrived on time Tuesday morning in Melbourne. We had said our goodbyes to table companions and waiters the evening before but we did encounter our Junior Waiter again at breakfast. After that it was a hurry up and wait day. Two big suitcases were, hopefully, making their way dockside as we cleared the last of our belongings from the stateroom so Rodel, our steward, could make it ready for the next guests. Now it was wait time, along with about 900 others leaving the ship in Melbourne. Disembarkation was orderly as usual and we were among the last to walk off. By 10:45 we were on a coach heading for Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport.
Wait time! No Air New Zealand personnel at the desk until 3:30 PM. How to kill nearly 4 hours at an airport, hmmmm? Oh goody! Check-in time, Hurry up, let’s be first. Wait time! How to kill 3 more hours at an airport AFTER clearing security. The only good thing was that we seemed to be in between the morning traveller rush and the evening rush. Security and customs areas were almost empty. Wine time!
Ah ha, our airplane arrived and close to on time. Boarding commenced with wheelchairs and baby strollers first but somehow as a result of bizarre placement of lounge benches and corral tapes we ended up with the pre-boarding group. Why not, we deserved it. Now, being first on the plane we wait some more.
Only 30 minutes late off the ramp but only 15 minutes late on arrival in Auckland, thanks to winds aloft. Air New Zealand did have what they referred to as a meal on board, The smell was enough to put me off. Give me rough seas any time. Gail was braver than I and tried something called beef and noodles. A bread roll and sweet cake went down and the rest went back.
The overhead sign in the airplane just needs a slight change.
Quite amazingly, we were quickly off the plane and even more amazingly our luggage was in the first batch to arrive on the carousel. Yes! By the way, I think the world’s largest duty free liquor store is between the gates and baggage pickup at Auckland airport.
Passport control took but a couple of minutes, now on to agriculture control (or whatever they call it) Gail always carries packaged snack food with her to manage her blood sugar. The chap at the first inspection station could not get his mind around “packages of ritz crackers with cheese” so we were re-directed to secondary inspection for the first time ever. The lady at the inspection station took one look at the bag of snacks, shook her head in disbelief, asked a couple of additional questions then shooed us off to X-ray. Yep, both coming and going in New Zealand. Looking forward to the body search on exit. We really hate air travel these days.
Our Supershuttle van and driver was awaiting his passengers of which we were two and it was easy to find. Auckland has “day time” and “construction time” on their roads. Fortunately, traffic was very light at 1:30 AM and we were at the hotel before 2. During checkin Gail indicated she was hungry and our order for pizza and wine went to room service before we started for our room. We needed a user guide for the elevator. “Insert and remove key card then select your floor.” Sounded simple enough. Figured it out eventually.
Finally, dinner…and sleep.