Today I drove through the rain (Autumn is turning to winter today) back to Auckland. Tomorrow I'm heading over to Australia to Melbourne for the weekend to visit my besties Pam & Kul who moved out here 4/5 years ago - yea! My flight is at 6am so am in a motel by Auckland airport for the night. located between the car hire drop off office & the motel is the Villa Maria Winery....New Zealand's most awarded winery! After a walk round the vineyards I got to...

Woke up around 5.30/6am as I often do...managed to doze off again only to be woken suddenly by Andy telling me we should have checked out an hour earlier - it was suddenly after 11! Oops! So we hurriedly checked out & headed to a cafe for breakfast. We then wandered to the sky tower - a tall tower built in the mid 90s 328m tall wth an observation deck on the 60th floor. Visibility was quite good so was views across the city out to the ocean We then had a dr...

My flight from China was uneventful. Again it was on a 787 Dreamliner (the one with coloured windows). Like many Sunday's I spent it dozing & watching easy to watch films (Jurassic park 1, 2 & 3) only interspersed with views of Papa New Guinea & the Great Barrier Reef After landing in Auckland it didn't take long to get through security & collect my bag. Managed to find Andy who whisked me off to collect a hire car he'd arranged for me (glad some...