Our departure from Masterton, gave us a chance to try out our wet weather gear with Wellington turning on the weather in a way that only Wellington can! A brief overnight stay and then an early morning flight to Auckland was the kids first time on a plane. Scott wasn't impressed and was very bored on the short 1 hour flight - not a good sign with 22 hours of flights ahead of us. At Auckland airport we managed to find "Stumpy" our kiwi mascot for the trip (named by Darryl - which has turned out to be quite appropriate but that's a later story). We left Auckland lunchtime on Tuesday, and 10 hours later arrived in Singapore. A few hours at Singapore airport were enough to find the camera we had picked out, and check out the Butterfly enclosure - a shame it was night time and all the Butterflys were asleep!! Then on to Milan another 12 hours. The flights themselves were good, but it wasn't easy to sleep. Fortunately the in flight entertainment was excellent and as a group we got through a total of 16 movies, and any initial concerns we had about boredom were quickly allayed. We arrived in Milan at 6am Wed excited, (and a little tired) still finding it a little hard to believe we are actually doing this.