The flight touched down just before 11.00 and shortly
afterwards we were doing immigration and customs and because we had the tent
which we declared this was taken away to be checked for cleanliness and was it
harbouring any animals etc. Welll it take them long to find out the tent was
quote “extremely clean” and on your way. We found the taxi rank and took a
large taxi as we had four large bags plus additional smaller bags and there is
an airport rule, airport rule only I must say, that any check in bags must go
in the trunk of the car and not anywhere in the car and there was an officious
lady checking everything and we had one small bag which would not fit and she
said tough u need another Taxi, I said u have to be joking as this was hand
carry on the aircraft and so she backed down. The Hong Kong Chinese taxi driver
told us that this was a new rule which applied to Airport pickups only and
nowhere else in the whole of New Zealand. This is Health and safety gone mad
again.
We arrived at the Mercure Hotel on Customs Street just
a short walk from the Harbour and settled in and after a shower went to bed for
about three hours as we were both a little tired.
In the evening we headed down to the Quay and walked
around for a while and found a restaurant we think we may have been to before
and had an excellent meal and Jennifer says they were the best scallops she has
ever had and also the chocolate tart also was very good and complemented by a
nice bottle of Chardonnay and finally a desert which we really don’t normally
have but it was so nice just sitting watching the people stroll by with the
harbour only yards away.
And do so back to the Hotel for some well-earned rest
