Day 1: We Made It!

We left a cold and snowy Framingham bright and early on Wednesday morning. We were feeling strange about leaving our home for 8 weeks but full of excitement with the adventures ahead of us. Surprisingly, the 18-hour flight which we were dreading turned out not to be so bad. The Quantas lay-flat seats and complimentary PJs (embellished with kangaroos on them no less) certainly helped as they allowed us to get quite a bit of sleep on the way. So, Yay Quantas Airlines! We had a very early (7am) check-in at the lovely boutique hotel, Hotel Britomart, in downtown Auckland. We had a delicious breakfast including a much needed and well-prepared coffee. After showering and putting on our shorts, we were ready to enjoy the sunny 75-degree weather by taking a stroll along the water and getting our bearings in the area.

Midday we were picked up by our old Framingham neighbor, Doris Riegel who moved here with her family 18 years ago! She gave us a superb tour of Auckland, driving us around to all of the different neighborhoods here, showing us beautiful parks and taking us to the best sites for city views. We stopped and had lunch at a seaside open air cafe which was just delightful in every way. The transition to New Zealand culture has been pretty easy so far with English as the primary language, food being most recognizable and quite good and people being very friendly and helpful.

In the evening, we had an early dinner with Doris and her husband, Martin at a restaurant called Mr. Morris. We had a fantastic wine paired dinner (all NZ wines of course) and it was great seeing Martin again too. We were pretty pooped by the end of dinner but quite proud of ourselves for making it through the day without crashing! Excellent Day#1!