Couldn't sleep this morning, so I got some sunrise pictures from the balcony of our lovely room at the Rees Hotel. I'd quickly grown attached to this place...
With no morning itinerary, we were afforded a leisurely breakfast in the tiny Rees restaurant. We had to wait for a table, but not too long. Rees had a ten a.m. checkout time, but they kindly allowed us to stay until noon. We got our last enjoyment out of the view, then made another trip into town for some possible last-minute souvenirs. Afterward, we just drove around admiring the view. We saw some paragliders coming off a high cliff just outside the city; Queenstown is full of extreme sport opportunities of which we did not partake.
We were due at the Queenstown airport for a late afternoon flight back to Auckland. We found our way there quite early, and spent some time in the nearby shopping mall looking for a couple of things we can't find in Thailand. But we didn't have much luck here, either.
We searched for the place to return our rental car. With little confidence, we left it in a rental lot at the airport, carefully noting the location, license plate, etc. We checked into the little airport at a kiosk, and followed the signs to the car rental offices. When we returned the keys, they didn't want to check the car or know where we left it or anything. They said, "We'll find it!"
The lobby of the airport was adorned with autumnal decorations - so incongruous to me in mid-April. We grabbed some water and sat in the small waiting area with a tweenager who couldn't sit still, bumping my row of seats around. Tim wisely sat across from me.
When our flight was announced, we headed to the gate, crowded with people sitting on every available seat and floor space. Eventually we stepped onto the bus that carried us out to our Air New Zealand flight. It was a nice flight - short and uneventful. In Auckland we just had to walk across the street to the Novotel Auckland where we would spend our last night.
The restaurant had a long line and a pricey menu, so we walked back across to the airport and had some dinner at the Down Under. The service was really slow, and they seemed to forget part of our order. But the food was decent, and we could watch some American basketball on their many screens.
The staff told us that we could do an early checkout, go get checked in at the airport, then come back to the hotel for breakfast, which was available around 6 a.m. We had to go up and down and up and down the airport escalators to get checked in, check our bags, and get back to the hotel. Thankfully, the breakfast opened a little before six, so we had a quick bite and headed back to the airport.
When we started toward the gates, we heard an alarm going off, but no one seemed to be concerned about it. The closer we got to the gates, we became aware of a large crowd gathering ahead of us. We couldn't understand the announcements being made, but finally figured out there had been a fire on the concourse, and the entire area was shut down. So we stood with the anxious crowd of people as our flight time drew nearer. The alarms finally stopped, they let staff go up the steps, then about ten minutes later we were moving en masse up the stairs to the gate. Things were delayed a bit, but we eventually bid farewell to this lovely country and took to the skies once again. This "unexpected journey" was unexpectedly wonderful.
Dang it tweenagers! They think they're SO COOL with their gameboys and minesweeper games.
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