The Ending of a Story

I thought maybe I should round this off with a few words about the country so many people come to visit as tourists. All this time I'm thinking Europe is so exotic and amazing, and then I remember tourism is our main industry, and it's pretty easy to see why...

Flights: Let me just say that Air New Zealand staff ROCK with casual laid back kiwi friendliness that you completely don't realise you missed until you are getting on your flight home.
It's a bit of a shock to the system hearing shockingly fast and mumbled announcements tho, in a language that only some would recognise as English. Even I couldn't catch most of what was said.

My personal highlight was hearing a flight attendant man ask a passenger "do you want chups?" just like in the infamous beach whale video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdVHZwI8pcA

Anyway, they moved me from the Japan-school-trip end of the plane to a row at the front where I got 3 seats to myself and even some sleep. Woot

Day hotel at Tokyo Narita Airport: best 4 hours sleep I ever paid for! SO worth it.

View out window over New Zealand: Spectacular of course! Where else can you can snowy volcanic mountains right next to beach after beach after beach, rolling hills, desert, farmland and cities and blue skies and thousands of kms of native bush, all viewable in one glance out your airplane window?? You could even see the sheep and the boats.

Arrival at Auckland airport: Do you know you can get a breakfast combo in NZ for equivalent of 3 Euros??? INSANE MADNESS. NZ is SO cheap.

Greeting party: 2 of my favourite men. They didn't let me carry my bags, not even my cabin bag. Oh I love kiwis.

P-town mall: Gangsta fresh. Yeah it sucks that kiwis don't have that same international style, and in general don't care that much about presentation . But being able to wear your trackies ("Bum pants"), hoody and sneakers to the mall (or go barefoot. Or wear slippers) without getting any dirty looks has got to count for something!
(I know there are kiwi girls out there who will protest madly at this. Go to Europe.)

Bed: Oh yeah my bed is so freakin comfortable. Too bad jetlag has got me waking up at 3am every single morning, exhausted or not.. gah

Food: Ok so I've spent like every post so far describing amazing European food. But it ends here. Because my mum makes the best lemon meringue pie in the whole wide world and tomorrow we're having roast lamb with kumara and gravy and caramelised vegetables which we do almost every Sunday lunch and the rest of the world just can't compete. SORRY.