So left Dublin
(wonder if this will be ready when I get back ;)
at 6:30 pm on friday, and then an hour later to Heathrow. Then a 2 hour wait, and a nice long relaxing.. 12 hour flight… my favourite ;) To Singapore. Must say though, Singapore Air is a *very* nice way to travel. Hot towels for you when you arrive, movies on demand (so you can watch what you want when you want). Chilled out by a pond in Singapore Airport… (pics will be put up sometime!) for another hour, and then another lovely 10 hour flight.
Didn’t really manage to actually sleep very much, but sure that’s ok :) Did watch Bad Boys 2 (ok) Charlies Angles – Full Throttle (ok ish), Ever After (quite nice), Johnny English (need to be 10 to enjoy this), The Devils Advocate (quite good) and finally The Hulk (moderatly terrible, they really enjoyed splitting the screen up in that film!)
Then touchdown into Christchurch, reminded me a wee bit of Dublin actually, quite green, quite flat, with hills/mountains in the background… well, from the airport it reminded me of it.
Right up until the point that you had to go through immigration and customs.
Customs in NZ is no joke. Honestly. They’re lovely don’t get me wrong!, but if you want to try and smuggle an apple or an orange or somem cheese in – forget about it! I had 4 apples in my bag (and two bananas) for the trip over. They all got eaten.. however on arrival a lovely little dog (beagle?!) came over and sat down by my bag and took an avid interest in it.. I explained to the nice lady attached to the dog that I knew all about the fruit which had been in my bag, and that I’d eaten it all before arrival.. (which was actually true)… Story there was that a cousin of mine had visited a year ago, and totally forgotten about an apple at the bottom of her bag… they were kind enough to believe that she’d forgotten about it, but not kind enough to forgo a $200 on the spot fine…
I also declared 4L of duty free spirits and about a kilo of cadburys…. but they didn’t mind that at all…
Oh – then when my bag was being x-rayed they took me aside again… and said ‘sir, you have a strange ball like object in your bag, would you mind us having a look at it’. I said, no worries mate (well actually I didn’t say that)… anyway, turned out to be my well padded contact juggling ball… so that was grand, and finally through to arrivals.
Where Glynn met us and took us back to the house. It’s great. Really great. Really, it’s great. Big, comfortable, with a dishwasher (yes I know I’ve mentioned this already, but some things can’t be said enough). Will take a couple of pics later, now it’s time to get ready to head ‘downtown’ and see a wee bit of christchurch before finding a pub to watch the match in (Ireland Vs. France in the 1/4 finals – yes I know anyone reading this now will know what match…. but in the future it may not be so obvious!…. I’ve explained too much haven’t I ;) yes, too much time on pooters and too little time outside.. time to put that to right…
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