John and I have been talking about going to New Zealand since we met. For our 10th wedding anniversary, we decided to go BIG, and go there for three weeks - I mean, when you fly halfway around the world, you need enough time to adjust so you can enjoy the trip, right? We wanted a way to see lots of things in a short time (and not have to drive it all ourselves). John came across the Sir Edmund Hillary Explorer Rail & Coach tours. So that took care of the south island, but there's so much to see on the north island, including Hobbiton ! For a small country, NZ sure has a lot of "highlights." There's a link to my google photos at the end of each day, starting with Friday. Week 1: North Island Adventure We left Austin on March 2, and because we crossed the international date line, we missed March 3 entirely and arrived on Tuesday, March 4 . :) I booked our Auckland hotel with points, thanks to a special deal from Chase in January that offered a 70% bonus when I tr...
Saturday, June 3: Landed in London on Saturday with only 2 hrs of sleep on the plane... which is what happens when you're seated right next to the restroom. Sigh. We dropped our stuff in the apartment and went to lunch with the parents, and then we went off to find the Polish museum - only open the first Saturday of the month. Of course, we went to the wrong tube stop and had to hike a million miles... The Polish gentleman who was the tour guide was a survivor of WWII, I think. He knew everything - and assumed that we knew nothing, especially about WWII, which is not a good assumption to make with our family. Anyway, John and I were totally exhausted after the museum, so we went back to the flat for a while. The 'rents had theater tickets, so John and I stumbled out to find dinner in the rain and ended up having burgers at GBK in Earl's Court. I think the maitre'd was American. This was the start of my string of bunless burgers (gluten-free was hard to find) on this ...
Phew. Made it to Barcelona, reunited with my sweetie. Hooray! Of course, the Universe decided to poke me a few times along the way, to see if I was paying attention. [Picture: my two ~50lb suitcases and one giant duffel, plus my non-wheeled carry-on. Yes, everything has a luggage tag from SC!] My plane was leaving at 9:20pm from Dulles. It had been pouring rain on and off all day, so we tried to make a run for it between rainstorms around 4:30pm. Unfortunately, so did everyone else in town, so we sat in traffic for an hour just to get out to the Tyson's area. [The traffic was made worse by the Presidential motorcade, which came out just as we hit 18th & Pennsylvania Ave. I made sure to blow some raspberries in his general direction. I might have also waved a few select fingers...] It was about the time that we got to Tyson's that I realized that I had left my medication (and the handy little cold-pack travel case I bought for it) in the fridge at the house. ARGH. Mom sa...
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