The trip from Cologne to Auckland

 

We got to Los Angeles (I didn't sleep much at all on the flight).  The British Airways representatives met us at the airport and told us that we were booked onto Air New Zealand flight NZ1 to Auckland leaving the next night.  We then made our way to the hotel. 

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We had a nice surprise when we found out that we were staying at the Hilton.

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This was our room.

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The next day (after not having slept much that night either), I opened the curtains to look at the view.  The airport is in the background.  We discovered the pool, so we sat by it for a while and tried to get a tan after the nasty German winter.

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We thought we had a nice view until we went upstairs to visit Karla (another stranded New Zealander).  She could see the entire airport.  She hadn't had much sleep either (staying up all night to watch the planes).

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While we were visiting Karla, we witnessed a spectacular sunset (smog tends to provide good ones).

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We got to the airport on time, and tried to check-in for our flight.

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We were told by an Air New Zealand employee that there was no record of us being on the flight, and that we'd have to go standby.  Naturally, we weren't impressed at this. 

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After an anxious hour-long wait, we were told that we had made it onto the flight.

On the flight, I was tired, but couldn't sleep.  The guy next to me was from New York, and he was coughing the whole time. (I ended up being very sick - probably catching what he had).

To top it all off, the latch for the tray table came off in my hand.  I broke the airplane!  They had to put sticky-tape on the seat for the landing so that we wouldn't all die.

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But, in the end, we landed safely in Auckland.  Here's the first sighting of land.

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Of course, no flight would be perfect without lost baggage.  We waited for two hours for our bags, but they didn't come (just think of all the Christmas shopping!!!).  They misplaced about 20 bags on this flight, judging from the number of people queuing to register the loss. Our parents waited patiently the whole time, and there was no way to contact them...

The baggage did turn up that night though.

And to think I used to love flying...  :)

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