Day 1
I was already a bit nervous about only having two hours between arrival in Auckland and our departure to LAX given our recent experience with Air New Zealand (as much as 2 hours late recently) so it was not reassuring to see we were going to be delayed by half an hour. Then we read on Stuff that the International terminal in Auckland being evacuated because of a fire. They did manage to make up a bit of time, so we actually were only about 20 mins later than scheduled and had plenty of time to walk to the International terminal once we arrived. Our bags were checked all the way to Heathrow so that made life much easier, as we could bypass the usual chaos in the departure area and go straight to through to security etc.
We boarded and left on time for Los Angeles. The 12 hour flight seemed to go really quickly, and we both managed a few zzzzz's. We'd pre-booked a row of two seats at the back of the plane, our favoured spot as we don't have to disturb anyone to go to the loo or stretch our legs. We had nice views over LA flying in to land, including the HOLLYWOOD sign on the hills. Then the palaver of going through customs, it's made quite efficient, because we are transiting we got given a priority green card which whizzed us to the fast queues, but we were still questioned, finger printed and passports stamped as we entered the USA. Then the palaver of TSA (security) before we got back on the plane. I have a lensball, which is a small glass ball that can be used to photograph through to give some unusual effects. Of course this shows up as a solid disk on x-ray, so every time, they wanted to see it. J was carrying this for me in his hand luggage, so he was the one held up and quizzed on each occasion. This resulted in some muttering, and we'll be putting it in the checked luggage for the trip home! Leg 2 was actually only about 9 and a half hours, and that seemed to drag a bit, I did get some sleep but was quite fidgety the last 4 hours or so. We arrived at Heathrow to an enormous queue at immigration, and despite having E-passports, were not considered good enough to use smart-gate and had to queue with the rest of the riff-raff and do it all manually. That seemed to take forever, but eventually we got through and were happy to see our bags on the luggage carousel. No customs to speak of, we just waltzed right on out the green channel with no-one even in attendance.
Decision time, do we slum it on the tube or spring for an Uber. Uber won the coin toss, and we made our way to the designated pick-up point. Just as well I had found out prior to leaving exactly where this was else we would have been a bit tricked. An uneventful ride through the city, heads on swivels and eyes on stalks looking at a familiar yet different city given it's been 15 years since we were last here.
Arrived at our hotel at 1.15pm, of course check-in isn't until 2pm and the rather unhelpful lass behind the counter made no effort to see if our room was ready, we just got the standard "check-in isn't until 2pm" so we left our bags and went for a walk. Off towards Borough Market, an area we used to be familiar with, but it was been developed quite a bit and is now heaving with people. We're trying to work out whether it's just that we're not used to it or it actually has got busier. We killed 45 minutes and went back on the dot of 2, hoofed it to our room and had a quick freshen up. The room is small & basic, but the bed is very comfy and it's quiet. We can see the London Eye and the top of St Pauls from our window on the 5th floor. Then it was back out on the streets and walking around until we were about to drop. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back to our room, and hit the hay by 6pm !!
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