Travelling is Fun!

We're here at the Westin Auckland and it's beautiful, although it's wasted on us a bit since we're so tired and cranky (some of us more than others).

Yesterday kinda sucked. We got in at 6:00am, were held up in the customs line at the airport because we had fishing and camping gear and cat treats. Then they confiscated Iain's tent, so we had to wait a half hour to get it back. Then we couldn't find our rental car place and had to call and have one of their reps meet us. We tried to buy a cell phone but it was Sunday and the 2 Vodaphone stores we passed were closed. So we bought phone cards to call my family but the two payphones we tried weren't working correctly and kept rejecting the cards, even after we tried two different kinds. We ended up resorting to the $5/minute "Hiwe'reherebutIcan'ttalkbecausethisiscostingafortunebye!"

After breakfast at a neat café in the neighborhood of Ponsonby, we drove off to visit the cats in quarantine. When we arrived at the Pussycat Lodge we were informed that the owner was "at the hot rod show" and wouldn't be back until 5pm. We'd told the guy were coming, but he must've forgotten. This was agonizing - we were looking right at the building where all of the cats were, but couldn't get in - we even tried to go around the back and catch a glimpse, but it was impossible (although we got an idea what the cages look like, and they're nice and big, like the size of a large bathroom.) We had no recourse but to turn around and drive back to town.

The good news is that the hotel upgraded us to a corner suite, and it's beautiful (although the hotel doesn't let you use phone cards, so we still couldn't make any calls).

What should've been a celebratory day in beautiful Auckland was blemished by annoyances like "Hey Sas, I just called the cattery again and the guy's still not back, so we can't see the cats until tomorrow." and "Hey Iain - I just checked my cell phone usage and I'm over by 500 minutes."

In spite of things,we had a few good meals and walked around the harbor a bit. It was gorgeous outside. That evening, we realized we were too tired to wander around again looking for a place for dinner, so we went to our room and decided to get room service. It never happened: we fell asleep as soon as we got into bed.

Today we're flying to Dunedin to see Iain's family for a week, so we're really looking forward to that.