Friday 7th October 2011
A 5am rise for today’s flight as it takes me a while to get through the bathroom and get dressed. The aim was to leave the house by 6am. We have done enough 3am starts to get the early bird flights, and it is just too hard. We always found with those flights sleep was not great as you tend to worry about sleeping through the alarm!
This morning there was no chance of that happening as dear Abbie (our old deaf cat) knew exactly what was going on and woke us at 4.30 am demanding a finally ‘love’ and cuddle before we got up! We know Kate will ensure Abbie will get lots of attention while we are away. Including the compulsory brushing which Abbie demands.
Packing
We are not the most organized packers, as we don’t do lists - we should really as I am always paranoid we will leave something behind. Although I have decided as long as we have all our medications, mobile phone charger, and power chair charger, we can buy anything we leave behind within reason.
We had purchased an Eagle Creek ‘Packing Folders’ http://www.eaglecreek.com/ from Bivouac at Sylvia Park. Interestingly the New Zealand
Interesting the two folders took all our shirts and Pete’s good trousers, and the cube we fitted in all our socks (I wear socks daily due to having KAFO’s which means always wearing shoes) and underwear for 9 days. Our large suitcase looked empty! (We travel with just one large case between the two of us because we take the power chair and walker so a second case would be a pain) Even with the toilet bags, boots and all our electrical cords etc for the power chair, camera and laptop we had spare room! As we were concerned about the weight we decided to take our carry on bag, which we would check in. So, on the plane all we had was a satchel with the Netbook, camera and our Camelbak drink bottles. The ‘folders’ were a great investment as the clothes don’t move around and stopped them creasing badly.
We got away on time, and had a quick trip to the airport. We had booked the car into the Auckland Airport
Checking in was easy. As we require ‘assistance’ we cannot use the Air NZ ‘self check-in’ pods, but that’s fine. The large case weighed in at 21.5kgs, so we would have been slightly over of we hadn’t used the carry-on case.
Plenty of time to have breakfast before we head through to the departure lounges. Once again there have been changes to the terminal, and for the better. The café we have usually ended up having a coffee at now offers full meals, so we were able to have a nice cooked breakfast rather than having something like McDonalds. A big improvement on the food and the atmosphere.
Going through the Departure point was easy being ushered to the express lane. Duty free shopping was confusing as usual. Why do they make the shops, stands etc so hard to negotiate! Of course it is a marketing ploy….
Off to Gate 8.… On the way were stopped at one of the water stations and filled one of the Camelbak bottles.
I was surprised we were not the first to the gate as we thought we were early. It seemed no time before we were boarded. Of course we were the first.
Flight Air NZ 135 to Brisbane
We were allocated Row 47 seats B and C with the window seat blocked - that sounded fine, but it sounded a long way back. What I had forgotten was we were on a 777-200, and our seats were in the last row the first cabin. Down side - we heard every toilet flush!
Our seat allocation was fine, and for once I had the window seat so Pete could get in and out easily, and we didn’t have to worry about a third person. Boarding went very smoothly, even with a nearly full flight we pushed back 15 minutes ahead of time. That doesn’t happen often!!!
TIP - Don’t open and pull the cover off the Camelbak once the air - use it in the correct manner and suck the water. I opened and pulled the top off and gave poor Pete a shower!!!! Very dumb of me, not being a sports person I had no idea how to use a Camelbak correctly - I do now!!!. I was staggered how much water came flowing out…. We did have a good laugh.
We had booked ‘The Work’s tickets - seat, 23 kg luggage, meal and entertainment. The savings to fly seat and carry on only or seat and 23 kg luggage, to me seems pointless, we are on holiday. The meal served was lunch which was weird, we were expecting breakfast. The meals were nice; I had the beef casserole and Pete the Cajun chicken. Coffee was as usual awful and luke warm. But there was Hokey Pokey Ice Cream! There was wine etc but they hardly bothered to offer that but I guess it was because it was a full flight. I have to say the personal entertainment screen offer so much to choose from I struggled to find something to watch. I ended up watching a couple of episodes of ‘Big Fat Gypsy Weddings’ and ‘What is really in our food’, then listened to music (the selection was endless) while reading the in-flight magazine.
The flight went really quickly and with the help of tail winds we were another 15 minutes ahead of schedule. In the end we landed 25 minutes early, but that advantage was washed away when we got to Customs and there was a huge queue due to a Singapore Airline flight just in front of us. It is the first time we had had to wait in a queue in the express line behind crew etc. Bonus was the airport staff assigned to us stayed around as they did not have another assignment to go on to In baggage claim one stayed with me and retrieved the bags while Pete and another went off to locate the power chair and walker. From there we saw one MAF person and walked out.
In the Arrivals Hall I turned the mobile on and called Brisbane Bargain Car Rental http://www.bargaincars.com.au/ used the 1300 number - naughty but it was on the confirmation. Easy instructions go out to the bus park and wait on Lane 3. We only had to wait about 5 minutes as the van was at the Domestic Terminal. Nice old chap duly arrived in a sign written van which was easy to spot. A short drive to the depot with another family on board to sign up and collect the car. We had booked a Camry wagon but we should have gone for a Ford wagon, but as all their cars were fully booked there was no chance of upgrading. We were impressed with the owner who was friendly and efficient. We had not used this company before I was not sure what to expect, particularly as the price was very reasonable. $350 for 9 days, half what the mainstream rental companies wanted. The car has done over 120,000 km’s but it is a Toyota
By 11.15am we were heading north to Noosa. We decided to stop at the first roadside service centre to get water and a snack. As with the last Aussie trip Pete spotted a car of interest at the pumps! This time a beautiful Mk1 Escort 2 door in red. Of course he had to go and have a look and then a chat to the very proud owner.
The trip to Noosa was uneventful and quick 1.5 hours to the unit. Having been there three times before we had a pretty good knowledge of the route, but still used the map book to ‘check’.
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