A surprisingly orderly trip from Wellington to Auckland to LA to Frankfurt to London. This was easily the longest trip I've done (36hrs all up). Had some minor stress at LAX due to the US customs guy who spotted the green tag in my passport from my last trip to the US - apparently the Air NZ people who checked my boarding pass last year neglected to take the visa waver form off me. Fortunately, the guy decided not to deport me.
I changed over to Lufthansa at LA for the final two legs - quite a different vibe in the cabin compared to Air NZ, with staff bustling about and swapping between various European languages with ease. The Germans seem to take a bit of pride in their punctuality, so I was quite amused when the pilot announced:
'Ve vant to get you to your destination on time, but not everybody is sitting down, so ve vill have to vait. Thank-you.'
Anyway, I had the meat in the sandwich seat between a loud American lady (on her way to Venice to go on a cruise to Brazil) and a quiet German girl who was going home for Christmas. The American lady consumed two glasses of wine, a cognac, a brandy, asked me 15 times if this was my first trip overseas (whilst spraying me with spit), then put a blanket over her head and promptly fell asleep - much to my relief...
Frankfurt airport turned out to be a huge sprawling entity, and required a freezing bus ride to get to the plane. True to form, Lufthansa deposited me in Heathrow 10 mins ahead of schedule. Emily kindly came out to meet me off the plane, and transport my somewhat tired self to Reading.
