Leaving, Arriving and all that Shebang

Mr Dad and Mrs Mum

Ok dokey, erm... The reality of writing a blog seems a bit odd now, but here goes for those who wish to know. I'll start of with a pic of Mum and Dad just before I was about to set off for the departure thingamy of Heathrow. And here's me looking apprehensive, sad and excited all at the same, and, to be honest, not enjoying having my picture taken.

A pensive moi

All in all the flights took over 29 hours. The first from Heathrow was only endured due to the inflight entertainment. I got to watch Badlands for about the squillionth time, plus a nice Kiwi film called Show of Hands. All the way to LA we flew on the edge of the sunset and on the TV's I could watch where we were and where was in daylight. All the time we were being chased by the night which only caught up with us in LA. So I had a 10 hour sunset, which would have been nicer if we didn't have to close the blinds for most of the journey. When I got to LA we all had to be sheparded in to a room where I was administrated by an LAPD dude. He was the doppelganger of a certain black Nazi satanist library user I knew, and with pretty much the same demeaner only he was in a police uniform and had a gun, which was little perturbing. After foolishly leaving a book I'd only read five pages of in the room we were locked in I got on to the flight from LA to Auckland, which was to last over 12 hours. I got to sit next a Canadian chick (wahey!) and she was quite talkative but I was knackered and thought I should get some kip in order to be able to survive the next day in a place with a 13 hour time difference. I then had to go through this biohazard quarentine place as they wanted to check out my boots for dirt. Apparently they could be confiscated but I had to declare I had them becuase if I didn't I could be fined a shed load, or failing that, imprisoned. The Kiwi's are harsh on this kinda thing. After that it was a bit of a rush as I had to cart all my kit from one terminal to the other quickly. The shuttle bus was too infrequent and my flight was too soon, so I hauled it over there me sen and nearly sweated to death. The last one hour flight was pleasant enough but landing in Windy Welly was nearly puke inducing, even on a relatively calm day.

Richard picked me up from the flight and then we went off to to check out Wellington and I got a phone sorted. After checking out some photography exhibitions at the Te Papa museum we went down to the harbour and had some grub and a beer. I took some quick pics before we left.

Welly harbour

Welly harbour again

More of Welly harbour

Then Richard drove me around Welly to point out some stuff, like Cuba Street where there are some bars worth checking out. :) Then we went to the place where they filmed Rivendell for LoTR.

In the Rivendell area, kinda!

It was quite wierd as it's just part of this small park and as we were leaving we saw some people building a set piece for The Hobbit. It was this circle of carved stone obelisks with a pointed archway entrance, and they were just twenty metres away from the park's road. I always thought these things would be filmed in more obscure places, and not in a local park. Odd!