Leaving Day. We were up at 7am, had a quick breakfast, made some bread rolls to take to the airport and lugged all our gear down to the bottom of the stairwell. It was with a bit of haste that we finally closed the door of the apartment, whispering a very quick farewell as we did so. Mats and Marianne had kindly parked their car in a street very close by, so it wasn't too far for us to carry all our luggage and load it. It amounted to 1x large ex-bike box, 2 x suitcases, 2 x backpacks/cabin bags, 2 x handbags, 2 x raincoats, 2 x winter jackets, 1 x travel pouch, 1 x bag of food. It was a lot!
The temperature was already in the 20s by the time we set off for Barcelona airport at 9am, and we were sweating already from heaving the bags around. Mats' car didn't have air-conditioning and the 2 hour+ trip to the airport was hot work. We talked all the way so the time went pretty quickly all the same. It was with a cheery but sad goodbye that they dropped us off. Sadly, we may not see them again.
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| Farewell with Marianne and Mats at Barcelona airport |
Loading up a trolley, we manoeuvred our way into the terminal and found a weighing machine. Our box bike weighed 21.5kg instead of the 20.5kg our scales had showed at the apartment so we had to do some shuffling of gear out of our two suitcases into already straining cabin baggage. We had an hour to wait until the check-in opened so sat down for a cup of coffee and ate our rolls.
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| Our luggage |
We entered the check-in line. I put on my winter jacket then 7kg backpack, nonchalantly slung my 10kg "handbag" over my shoulder and tried to cover it with my rain jacket as much as I could. John acted similarly. When our turn came, possibly quite fortuitously, we were waved to a counter that typically processed business class passengers because none of the latter were currently queuing. Hence the guy who checked us in didn't even bother to look at or weigh our cabin bags, let alone glance at our handbags. I'd placed them all at the foot of the counter in any instance so they were hard for him to see. With no problem at all we checked in our suitcases and were directed to the oversize counter to drop off the bike box. Great - the first hurdle was safely surmounted.
Passport control and security screening were no problem. When we were processed at the boarding counter immediately before boarding we tried to hide the handbags as much as possible. With no small relief we walked down the passage and boarded the plane.
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| Our cabin luggage! |
The flight was 1.5 hours late leaving and we were a little concerned about our connecting flight at Doha. Our 2.5 hour transit time had taken a big hit. The captain relayed that they'd try and make up as much time as possible, but in the end the flight took the full 6 hours anticipated.
We were expecting to have to race off the plane to try and get our connecting flight, however, the bus transfer from the plane to the terminal took about 20 minutes by itself. Thankfully John had looked on his Qatar app and found out that our connecting flight was delayed by 2 hours anyway, so the pressure was off. Walking into the terminal, the departure lounge for our next flight was right beside us, and better still there was no passport or security to have to go through. It was a refreshingly simple transit.
Our flight leaving Doha was supposed to leave at 2.30am but left at 4.30am. By this time, we had had no sleep and were feeling a little tired. Breakfast was served on board after 5am, and we finally closed our eyes sometime getting on for 6am. We both slept/dozed very well for the next 9-odd hours. It's the best sleep we've ever had on a flight we think. That left just 4-5 hours left of the 16 hour flight. Another few movies and breakfast filled that in pretty easily. On all the Qatar flights, both to and from Europe, the meals were extremely good.
We were feeling pretty good when we touched down at Auckland airport at 4.30am. All our luggage turned up safely, which is always a relief. We were careful to declare everything we needed to, and John had taken photos to show our walking poles had been washed, the wood backing on our paintings etc. The customs staff were really nice. They wanted to have a quick check of our small wicker bread basket but were happy with everything. It was a very happy moment to finally walk out into the public area of the terminal. Pretty promptly we transferred one of our handbags' contents plus other odds and sods into the suitcases because we'd paid for an extra bag on Air NZ - the bike box and two suitcases could each weigh 23kg (rather than 50kg total on the Qatar flights). Any extra weight on Qatar would have cost $40/kg!
Using two trolleys we wheeled our way to the domestic terminal at 5.30am. Our flight to Nelson wasn't scheduled until 8.30am, but the time until then went pretty quickly. Again, we were supposed to have just one cabin bag and perhaps a handbag. We both donned our winter jackets and raincoats, with pockets stuffed with fold-up umbrellas, chocolate bars, books and other heavy and dense items. Thankfully, at least the weather here was pretty cold - rather different to when we had put on the same attire in Barcelona airport and it was closer to 30 degrees. I didn't feel quite so absurd. That was our final hurdle - we'd managed to get all our gear onto the last flight. Phew.
The 1.5 hour flight went quickly, and rather blankly because of the cloud cover. Flying into Nelson it was raining and low cloud cover. However, it was exceptionally cheering to see the happy faces of Bella, Nic and our grandchildren waiting for us at the airport. There is nothing better than getting mobbed by your grandchildren!
After collecting our luggage, we used two cars to head to their place for a cup of tea and much anticipated catch-up on news. It was lovely to spend some time with them but we were starting to fade by early afternoon so bade farewell for now and drove home.
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| Violet and Heath |
With a quick stop-off at the Founders Book Fair close to home, we picked up some great reading material to take to our new holiday home at Hanmer Springs. We rolled up at home around 3pm. Sally popped in briefly a little later on but we only managed to stay awake until 6pm. It was so nice to get into our own bed, where we promptly slept for the next 13 hours! It was good to be home.....
